University of California • Berkeley
Marshall H. Kuhn
CATALYST AND TEACHER; SAN FRANCISCO JEWISH
AND COMMUNITY LEADER, 1934-1978
Regional Oral History Office
The Bancroft Library
MARSHALL H. KUHN
1916 - 1978
Photograph by James A. Tuck
National Park Service
Regional Oral History Office University of California
The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California
San Francisco Jews of Eastern European Origin, 1880-1940:
A Community Oral History Project
California Jewish Community Series
Marshall H. Kuhn
CATALYST AND TEACHER', SAN FRANCISCO JEWISH
AND COMMUNITY LEADER, 1934-1978
With Introductions by
Alyson Kuhn
Richard M. Leonard
Harold L. Levy
An Interview Conducted by
Elaine Dorfman
in 1977 and 1978
Sponsored by the Judah L. Magnes Memorial Museum, the American Jewish Congress,
and the Sierra Club History Committee
Copy No. _ /
Copyright (c) 1979 by the Regents of the University of California and
The Trustees of the Judah L. Magnes Memorial Museum
TABLE OF CONTENTS — Marshall H. Kuhn
PREFACE i
DESCRIPTION, SAN FRANCISCO JEWS OF EAST EUROPEAN ORIGIN, 1880-1940 ii
INTRODUCTION, by Alyson Kuhn
INTRODUCTION, by Richard M. Leonard vi
INTRODUCTION, by Harold L. Levy viii
INTERVIEW HISTORY xv
BRIEF BIOGRAPHY xvix
AWARDS xxi
I FAMILY BACKGROUND AND CHILDHOOD 1
An Overview of Marshall H. Kuhn's Family and His Insights 1
Childhood in the Richmond, a San Francisco Jewish Neighborhood 11
A Response to Father's Death 16
Recollections of the Fillmore District 19
Brothers: Mortimer and Harold Albert Kuhn
Further Recollections of Father, Samuel I. Kuhn
Recreation and Street Play 25
Childhood Influences
Strength of Mother's Values
Influence of Jewish Community
Tensions Within the Jewish Community
Highly Esteemed Jews of the Community
Jewish Education and Athletics
Clarification of Childhood Recollections 43
Education as a Continuing Practice and Influence 46
Favorite Jewish and Non-Jewish Writers 46
Lowell High School 48
University of California, Berkeley 54
Qualities of a Good Education 55
II ORGANIZATIONS, GROUPS, AND THE SAN FRANCISCO JEWISH COMMUNITY 57
Mother's Affiliations 57
Effectiveness of Pre-1940 Jewish Organizations 59
Changes in the San Francisco Jewish Community 69
The Unaffiliated 70
Religious Education
Quality of Jewish Life
Uniting the Jewish Community
III EMPLOYMENT EXPERIENCES, 1938-1972 84
Financier Herbert Fleishhacker's Office Boy 84
California Blue Shield 86
The Irwin Memorial Blood Bank 89
A Significant Accomplishment 89
IV FURTHER REFLECTIONS 91
On Authors 95
An Awareness of Economic and Social Differences 95
V WORKING FOR THE JEWISH WELFARE FEDERATION 97
The Federation Concept 97
Feelings About the Federation 99
The Jewish Population Shift 99
Thoughts on Leaving the San Francisco Jewish Community Center 100
Jewish Community Center Problems 100
Major Changes for Federation Volunteers 102
The Federation's Future 105
VI THE RABBIS AND CANTORS OF TEMPLE EMANU-EL 107
Least Effective Rabbinical Contributions 107
Rabbi Louis Newman, 1924-1930 109
Rabbi Irving F. Reichert, 1930-1947 110
A Love-Hate Relationship with Temple Emanu-El 117
In Loco Parentis 117
Cantor Reuben Rinder, 1913-1959 119
Cantor Reuben Rinder and Rabbi Louis Newman 121
Cantor Joseph L. Portnoy, 1959 123
Rabbi Joseph Asher, 1968 124
Rabbi Alvin I. Fine, 1948-1964 125
VII MEETING THE NEEDS OF THE JEWISH COMMUNITY 128
Temple Affiliation of Paramount Importance in Jewish Life 128
The Triumphs and Disappointments of Temple Emanu-El 132
Breira and Rabbi Joseph Asher 134
The Significant Contributions of Congregational Leaders 136
Temple Emanu-El and the Future 138
Religious Education, Its Growth and Change 139
VIII IN RETROSPECT 142
Chaim Weizmann at the Hotel St. Francis, 1937 142
Issues Within the Jewish Community, 1937-1978 143
An Expansion of Values 146
Examining the Illusion and the Reality of Jewish Destiny 149
IX THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY 151
Undergraduate Student Years, 1934-1937 151
Forsaking School, 1937 152
Returning to Classes, 1940 153
Jewish Activities and Friends 155
Memorable Instructors 158
Athletic Activity 162
Enhancing the Potential of a Dynamic University 164
X A RELIGIOUS SCHOOL EDUCATOR'S EXPERIENCES, 1940-1977 168
Teaching at Temple Emanu-El, 1940-1953, 1971-1977 168
Founding the Jewish Youth Athletic League, 1946 170
Principalship at Peninsula Temple Beth El, 1953-1970 172
Major Contributions as a Teacher and Principal 179
Indications for Change in Religious School Instruction 185
Declining a Role in the Rabbinate 188
Perception of Teaching 189
Assessing the Quality of Jewish Education 193
The Role of the Religious School 194
XI FORTY YEARS AS A JEWISH WELFARE VOLUNTEER 198
Effecting Change in the Jewish Welfare Federation 200
Camp Tawonga Remembrances 203
Camp Swig 208
Devotion to Jewish Life and Values 213
The Satisfaction as a Catalyst 214
The Disappointments of a Volunteer 217
From Solicitor to Member of the Board of Directors 217
Meeting Great Leaders 219
Initiating a Jewish Vocational Education Service 222
"A Portrait of Federation - The Family of Federations" 223
XII SIERRA CLUB MEMBERSHIP, 1949 TO PRESENT 226
Jewish and Other Minority Members 228
Sierra Club Concerns, 1949 229
Significant Members of the Sierra Club 230
The History Committee 232
Founding Chairman 232
The History of the Committee 241
The Reliability of Oral History 250
Ishi 251
A Related, Unwritten Story 252
Writing the Introduction to Stickeen 259
Publication, Unrelated to the Sierra Club 262
Sierra Club Strong Personalities 263
Ryozo Azuma, an Admirer of John Muir Since 1914 268
XIII FURTHER EXPERIENCES OF A RELIGIOUS SCHOOL EDUCATOR 273
XIV COMMUNITY VOLUNTEER SERVICE
Bay Area Crusade
Young Audiences
San Francisco Camp Fire Girls
Boy Scouts of America 282
Diabetic Youth Foundation 282
John Muir Nature Trail 283
The Strybing Arboretum Society 285
The California Historical Society 286
Other Jews in Community Volunteer Services 287
The San Francisco General Hospital Auxiliary 290
The American Association of Blood Banks 293
University of California, Berkeley, Extension Program 295
The National Parks, a 4,000-Mile Adventure, 1938 297
Further Episodes as a Volunteer 299
Fund-Raising Experiences 300
A United States Naval Officer in Australia 302
The Strybing Arboretum 303
The Jewish Home for the Aged 304
Judah Magnes Memorial Museum 306
United Jewish Appeal 306
Joint Distribution Committee, United Jewish Appeal 309
Family Service and Homewood Terrace 310
Marshall Kuhn Track Club 312
The Importance of Volunteer Activity 313
XV COMMENTS ON PERSONALITIES AND ORGANIZATIONS 316
More About Ryozo Azuma 316
Organizations and Their Jewish Members 317
XVI OTHER SIERRA CLUB RECOLLECTIONS 328
XVII FAMILY AND SIGNIFICANT PERSONAL VALUES 338
Marriage to Caroline Nahman 338
Children 342
The Meaning of "A Jewish Family" 343
Personal Concerns 351
INDEX
PREFACE
The Northern California Jewish Community Series is a collection of
oral history interviews with persons who have contributed significantly
to Jewish life and to the wider secular community. Sponsored by the
Western Jewish History Center of the Judah L. Magnes Memorial Museum, the
interviews have been produced by the Regional Oral History Office of The
Bancroft Library. Moses Rischln, professor of history at California State
University at San Francisco, is advisor to the series, assisted by the
Center's Advisory Committee, Norman Coliver, chairman, Harold M. Edelstein,
Seymour Fromer, Mrs. Theodore Geballe, James M. Gerstley, Douglas Goldman,
Professor James D. Hart, Louis H. Hellbron, Mrs. Leon Mandelson, Robert E.
Sinton, Frank H. Sloss, Daniel Stone, and Mrs. Matt Wahrhaftig. The series
was inaugurated in 1967.
In the oral history process, the interviewer works closely with the
memoirist in preliminary research and in setting up topics for discussion.
The interviews are informal conversations which are tape recorded, transcribed,
edited by the interviewer for continuity and clarity, checked and approved
by the interviewee, and then final-typed. The resulting manuscripts, Indexed
and bound, are deposited in the Jesse E. Colman Memorial Library of the
Western Jewish History Center, The Bancroft Library, and the University
Library at the University of California at Los Angeles. By special arrange
ment copies may be deposited in other manuscript repositories holding relevant
collections. Related information may be found in earlier interviews with
Lawrence Arnstein, Amy Stelnhart Braden, Adrien J. Falk, Alice Gerstle Levi-
son, Jennie Matyas, Walter Clay Lowdermilk, and Mrs. Simon J. Lubin. Un tran
scribed tapes of interviews with descendants of pioneer California Jews
conducted by Professor Robert E. Levinson are on deposit at The Bancroft
Library and the Western Jewish History Center.
The Regional Oral History Office was established to tape record
autobiographical interviews with persons prominent in recent California
history. The Office is under the administrative supervision of Professor
James D. Hart, the director of The Bancroft Library.
31 May 1978
Regional Oral History Office
486 The Bancroft Library
University of California at Berkeley
Villa K. Baum
Department Head
Regional Oral History Office
CALIFORNIA JEWISH COMMUNITY INTERVIEW SERIES
Rinder, Rose (Mrs. Reuben R.)> Music. Prayer, and Religious Leadership;
Temple Emanu-El . 1913-1969. 1971
Koshland, Lucile Heming (Mrs. Daniel E., Sr.), Citizen Participation
in Government . 1970.
Koshland, Daniel E. , Sr. , The Principle of Sharing. 1971.
Hilborn, Walter S. , Reflections on Legal Practice and Jewish Community
Leadership; New York and Los Angeles, 1907-1973. 1974.
Magnin, Rabbi Edgar F. , Leader and Personality. 1975.
Fleishhacker, Mortimer, and Janet Choynski (Mrs. Mortimer), Family.
Business , and the San Francisco Community. 1975.
Haas, Walter A., Sr. Civic, Philanthropic, and Business Leadership.
1975.
Haas, Elise Stern (Mrs. Walter, Sr.), The Appreciation of Quality.
1975. In process.
Salz, Helen Arnstein (Mrs. Ansley) , Sketches of An Improbable Ninety
Years. 1975.
Sinton, Edgar, Jewish and Community Service jLn San Francisco, A
Family Tradition. 1978.
Kuhn, Marshall H. , Marshall H. Kuhn; Catalyst and Teacher; San Francisco
Jewish and Community Leader, 1934-1978. 1978.
Related information may be found in other Regional Oral History Office
interviews: Lawrence Arnstein, Amy Steinhart Braden, Adrien J. Falk,
Alice Gerstle Levison (Mrs. J.B.), Jennie Matyas, Walter Clay Lowdermilk,
Mrs. Simon J. Lubin, Harold L. Zellerbach; Bay Area Foundation History
series; The Petaluma Jewish Community series (interviews conducted by
Kenneth Kann) ; California Women Political Leaders series — Ann Eliaser,
Elinor Raas Heller, Carmen Warschaw, Rosalind Wyman; Dr. Rubin Lewis,
(chest surgeon); James D. Hart (fine printing); Mavnard Jocelyn (wine
technology); Ruth Hart (volunteer leader). Untranscribed tapes of
interviews with descendants of pioneer California Jews conducted by
Professor Robert E. Levinson are on deposit in The Bancroft Library
and the Western Jewish History Center.
ii
SAN FRANCISCO JEWS of EASTERN EUROPEAN ORIGIN, 1880 1940
A Community Oral History Project of
The AMERICAN JEWISH CONGRESS & JUDAH L. MAGNES MEMORIAL MUSEUM
ADVISORY BOARD
Rabbi Joseph Asher
Cantor Julius Blackman
Eugene Block
Ben Blumenthal
June Elliot
Jerry Flamm
Louis Freehof
Daniel T. Goldberg
Reggie Goldstine
Frances Green
Peggie Isaak
George Karonsky
Alfred Karp
Larry Kramer
Allen Lipsett
Rabbi Brian Lurie
Irena Narell
Dr. Moses Rischin
Adolph Rosenberg
Ruth Freeman Solomon
Sanford Treguboff
D.-bra Wolf
Dr. Mark Zborowski
STEERING COMMITTEE
Joel D. Brooks
Seymour Fromer
Marshall Kuhn
Stan Lipkin
Suzanne Kemiroff
PROJECT DIRECTORS
Barbara Deutsch
Ruth Rafael
ABSTRACT
942 Market Street, Suite
San Francisco, CA 94
Phone (41 5) 39 1-6:
The contributions of the Eastern European Jewish
community to the development of San Francisco have until
now been largely overlooked. This project will document
these specific contributions through two historically
significant methods of research: oral history and archival
documentation. The purpose is to record through taped
interviews and collected materials a broad cross-section
of San Francisco's Eastern European Jewish community.
Through these in-depth interviews we hope to cover the central
aspects of the San Francisco Jewish experience: the social
and political conditions which induced Jewish emigration from
Eastern Europe and those conditions which motivated settlement
in San Francisco; the social, cultural, and physical environments
of San Francisco and the interviewees' response to them through
out their lifetimes.
This project will not only document Jewish lifestyles of
that period but also the history of the institutions linked with
the development of that time. Our project includes coverage
of the South of Market district (ca. 1880 - ca. 1906} and the
San Bruno and Fillmore -McAllister districts (ca. 1906 - ca. 1940),
each at their time the focus of Eastern European Jewish life.
Also covered is the emergence of the Richmond district as the
symbol of upward mobility.
Through this project we will be able to provide information
for historical research, statistical comparisons, population
studies, and innumerable other fields of inquiry. Additionally,
community education and media presentations may be compiled.
The interview with Marshall Kuhn was begun as one in the San Francisco
Jews of East European Origin Project. Halfway through it was transferred to
the Jewish Community Leaders Series.
ill
INTRODUCTION, by Alyson Kuhn
I've been asked to write an introduction to my father's oral history, and
his death caught me on the brink of finally sitting down to do it. As a matter
of fact, the Monday before he was taken to the hospital, he and I spent a
fabulous evening together, indulging in our favorite joint pastimes, doing
things we'd always done together, things which will always remind me of him.
We had a long talk which revolved around my professional future and gave Harry*
an occasion to wax eloquent and intimate about Jewish San Francisco genealogy
and its various empires, with typical objectivity, candor, precision — and the
ever-present astounding orb of interrelated tangents. We played an excellent
game of Scrabble, which Harry happened to win, and consumed quantities of
French bread toast with butter and bowls of midnight ice cream. The following
day I stayed home from work and toyed with pounding out my introduction in the
afterglow of the previous evening. But I went for a bike ride and played with
my art post cards instead. My original plan was to recount several anecdotes
which for me really sum up the incredible essence of Harry, but now I feel a
need to choose differently, to make this a worthy final tribute to my father,
especially as some of what I'm about to describe I hope to press herewith,
once and for all, in my "memory book."
I think that my telling you of certain circumstances relating to my
father's "official passing" will assuage some of your pain about his death.
He had left very specific last wishes, complete with list of his favorite organ
music for the Temple Emanu-El organist, Ludwig Altinan. I went through this
file for my mother one night while she was at the hospital with my father. I
had been there twice earlier that day, and felt that my father's spirit had
left him. Thus I had secretly decided not to witness the "final rites" of
modern medicine, but rather to keep my blessed memories intact. I could not
stand to see those eyes without a twinkle. Harry had remained in control of
his cosmos throughout his illness, and I could not bear to see him otherwise.
So I pored through every scrap in his last wishes file and had my private
mourning session, as it swept over me how consciously my father wished his
life "imprinted" on his death.
On the most recent trips he led for Temple Emanu-El confirmation classes
to the Jewish cemeteries in Sonora, many students, as well as Harry himself,
were much taken with a line engraved on some of the tombstones: "To live in
hearts we leave behind is not to die." Harry had written the research
*Marshall told me that when his children were very young they wanted to call
him by his first name, as many Temple Emanu-El members did. Marshall replied
that they could call him Tom, Dick, or Harry, but not Marshall. Thus, Harry
became a loving nickname used by the Kuhn children for their father. Ed.
iv
librarian at the San Francisco Public Library to track down the source of the
quotation, and subsequently wrote personal letters to three of the students
who were particular friends of his, telling then what he had learned and
enclosing a copy of the full text of the poem "On Hallowed Ground," which
closed with those lines. I gave a copy -of this to Rabbi Brian Lurle to share
with my father's mourners.
At the funeral, Rabbi Magid spoke of how my father, even in his illness,
had seemed larger-than-life, blessed with almost superhuman energies and
resources, Intellectual and spiritual. Be said he had found my father intimi
dating in a sense, because in his presence you had to strive to meet his
expectations of you and for you. Rabbi Asher likened my father to one of his
beloved redwood trees, whose trunk had been felled, but whose branches and
roots would still flourish, referring to my mother and me and Bruce and Nancy,
and my father's multitude of pet projects. I took the roots to be the tradi
tions he embodied and cherished (some of them of his own innovation). Brian
spoke briefly, elaborating on how impossible it seemed to believe that my
father had really died, and I loved what he chose to say. For me, Harry in
death is more of a presence and a source of joy and energy than so many
people in life.
1 feel like an intellectual carbon copy of my father, and I told him so
in that marvelous talk we had. He was, in typical Harry fashion, amazed to
learn that people compared us in this way, and protested that he knew nothing
of art or music, and that I had talents he couldn't hope to approach. He
took the opportunity to apologize for never having thanked or praised me suf
ficiently for the art post card book I had made him for Father's Day 1977,
which work I felt celebrated the most beautiful shared aspects of our lives
and the qualities I most loved and respected in him. 1 had considered it my
creative masterpiece, all the more difficult to execute as I knew how ill he
was, and how much he wanted me to make something like this for him. Anyway,
in the course of this dialogue, he said how sorry he was for not having ac
knowledged my gift with proper extravagance and enthusiasm, but that he had
just lost the ability to write and type at the end of that spring and "besides,
what can you say about perfection?" I also told him how flattering I found
any comparisons people saw fit to draw between us — in spite of my feeling that
some of the things I least liked in myself had been inherited along with his
brain. I added that it was terribly unfortunate that he did not seem to have
transmitted his acute sense of moral judgment.
On several occasions I have described Harry to people as being "excruci
atingly moral." He seemed to instinctively know what the right course of
action was, even in the most intricate and political situations. He, of
course, protested that he was often beseiged by grave doubts and just tried
to do his best. This would have been a marvelous line for his tombstone (and
I know he would forgive me the pun), but he has been cremated per his wishes.
Let me return to my theme that Harry's death really reflects his life.
His twenty-some plastic tubs — his huge working files for his various commit
ments — have been distributed to a whole handful of organizations who will
carry on projects he had undertaken, and in several cases actually initiated.
He loved to refer to himself as a catalyst, a force behind the scenes spirit
ing worthwhile hypothetical projects into reality. Harry's wealth of expertise
and experience, coupled with his phenomenal memory and his love of teaching,
made him a "mentor" and an inspiration to many people, including some who knew
him only superficially or even second-hand. Harry's extraordinary humility,
his awesome articulateness, his total lack of academic pretension and his ever-
ready sense of humor contributed to his status of raconteur and public speaker
par excellence. Harry was, and again I am confident he'll forgive the pun, an
ultimate upper — he raised money and consciousness and spirits and blood
pressures. He left his mark and his memory on a wondrous maze of "soft forest
tracks."
Let me just tell you one story which Brian recounted at the memorial
service, and which I'd never heard. He and my father had been roommates on a
mission to Israel several years ago. One morning my father had thrown open
the shutters of their hotel room, gazed out across the Dead Sea and exclaimed,
"Brian, let's take Moab." This became a password between them in their work
together. Whenever they had something to accomplish, they would enter the
negotiations or discussion with "Let's take Moab." When Brian visited my
father in the hospital, he said to him, "Marshall, I don't think we're going
to take Moab today." And my father smiled his unforgettable smile. Secure,
I hope, in the knowledge that we will try to take it for him.
June 1978
San Francisco, California
vi
INTRODUCTION, by Richard K. Leonard
Marshall Kuhn will long be remembered as the conservation
ist who preserved the history of the Sierra Club. Not in a
single book or two, but in year after year of historical
material on national conservation issues. Almost all issues
of major importance require heavy efforts over periods of many
years. The protection of the National Park System through the
defeat of the proposal to build Echo Park dam in Dinosaur
National Monument required six long years in Congress. The
Wilderness Act of 1964 took over a decade of educational effort
throughout the nation. Marshall Kuhn as the first Chairman of
the History Committee of the Sierra Club generously, and
aggressively, arranged to transfer all such valuable historical
material to the great Bancroft Library of the University of
California at Berkeley. Their professional archivists are able
to provide permanent care and access for future generations.
Equally important, Marshall Kuhn has aggressively utilized
the powerful historical technique of Oral History. By concen
trating first on the older and more fragile leaders of the
Sierra Club, Marshall wisely and fortunately recorded the views
of such great leaders as Bernays, Bradley, Colby, and Farquhar
just before their deaths at about age 90 for each.
The powerful technique of oral history can also be continued
effectively on into succeeding generations. The Sierra Club is
vii
fortunate indeed that Marshall Kuhn had the foresight, energy,
and generous perseverance in creating such a valuable continuing
contribution to the future.
1 March 1978
San Francisco, California
viii
INTRODUCTION, by Harold L. Levy
Our friendship began in 1932 when Marshall H. Kuhn
was sixteen years old. He had just completed eleven years of
Religious School at Temple Emanu-El, and he was in the Confirma
tion Class of that year. He was elected to membership in the
Pathfinders, which was then a select group of boys who were past
confirmands of Temple Emanu-El. The Pathfinders met regularly
in the Rabbi Martin A. Meyer Memorial Room in the Temple House.
Marshall and I were both Presidents of the Pathfinders, and he
was custodian and preserver of the minutes and records of the
club, which, I believe, he delivered to the Judah L. Magnes
Memorial Museum.
The bond of our friendship strengthened over the years
as we grew from boyhood to manhood. We were both native San
Franciscans. The history of our City and its historical landmarks
fascinated us. We shared a continuing interest in Congregation
Emanu-El and its Religious School, and in Jewish education gener
ally. We were both graduates of Lowell High School and of the
University of California at Berkeley, and we both served in the
United States Navy from 1942 to 1946.
ix
If I had to find a touchstone of Marshall's remark
able career in professional and volunteer services, I would
look in the classrooms of the religious schools where he sat as
a student, teacher and principal for almost 35 years. There
his devotion to Judaism and his love for youth - the energy,
imagination and boundless enthusiasm of youth - provided the
catalyst for transmittal of Jewish ethical precepts into his
monumental achievements in the fields of youth, community health
and recreation services, Jewish education, and in the conserva
tion of our natural resources and historical heritage.
While I knew Marshall best through his volunteer
services, his record as a professional, with special expertise
in providing health care services for the total community, is
outstanding .
As a sales executive for Blue Shield of California
(California Physicians' Service) from 1946 to 1970, providing
group and individual pre-paid health plans, Marshall Kuhn
innovated the chest X-ray program for employees and directed
drives for blood donors and for United Way. From 1970 to 1972
he was manager of donor recruitment for Irwin Memorial Blood
Bank of San Francisco, and through his efforts, Irwin became
the first major blood bank in the United States to eliminate
paid donors. In 1972 and 1973 he was Executive Director of the
San Francisco Jewish Community Center. During the past four
years, he utilized his energy, his knowledge of the structure
and leadership of the San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Community,
and his skill in harmonizing and unifying human resources, as
a member of the staff of the Jewish Welfare Federation of San
Francisco, Marin County and the Peninsula. Although Marshall
was not a trained social worker, his record with Federation is
impressive, including: Director of the Advance, Pacesetter,
Community, Marin County, and Religious School Divisions;
Co-leader of Israel Missions in 1974 and 1975; Coordinator for
the General Assembly of Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare
Funds, and Director of the Jewish Community Endowment Fund.
I had occasion to observe Marshall's volunteer
services in United Way (formerly the United Bay Area Crusade) .
For many years, he headed the Crusade's Speakers Committee.
In the 1960 Campaign, he was Chairman of the Speaker and Film
Bureau, and in 1966 and 1977, he was a UBAC trustee. I heard
him address the volunteers of the Speakers Bureau, and I
remember his speech for his reference to Maimonides1 "ladders
of charity", the supreme degree being to provide the means to
restore self-worth, so that the poor can become self-supporting.
The next best is giving in such a way that the giver and the
recipient are unknown to each other.
Marshall knew Jewish history and literature. The
Code of Holiness in the Book of Leviticus was a guide to his
conduct. I think, however, that for him, "Whatsoever thy hand
findeth to do, do it with thy might" was infinitely more im
portant than the attempt to "love thy neighbor than thyself".
In all his volunteer activities, which are too
numerous to chronicle in this introduction, his goal was to
carry a project through to completion, to create from nothing
something of worth and value for others, to get things done
with patience, perseverance, with careful research and factual
precision. He was, in truth, a catalyst, and he had the
capacity to bring about change without being unduly affected
himself. In pursuing his goals, he had a passion for fair, open
and honorable dealings. In every project his hand found to do,
he was always a teacher, and his role was to tell both sides.
It is impossible to record here a complete list of
Marshall's identification with numerous Jewish and community
organizations in the Bay Area. The scope of his work reached
out to a multitude of health, education, youth services, social
welfare, conservation, recreation and historical agencies.
However, by way of examples of his activities, the following
deserve mention:
EDUCATION (including his teaching on the faculties
of Congregation Emanu-El, San Francisco, and Peninsula Temple
Beth-El, San Mateo) :
He was the founder of the Educators' Council of the
Bureau of Jewish Education, San Francisco, and served as its
chairman in 1962, and he was a member of the Board of Directors
and an officer of the Bureau of Jewish Education.
xil
YOUTH SERVICES;
San Francisco Council of Camp Fire Girls;
San Francisco Area Council Boy Scouts of America/
Diabetic Youth Foundation: He was a member of its
Board of Directors and undertook to raise funds to establish
Bearskin Meadow Camp for diabetic children.
Jewish Chautauqua Society and National Federation
of Temple Brotherhoods;
Jewish Youth Athletic League, which he founded?
Jewish Welfare Federation Committee on College Youth
and Faculty;
B'Nai B'rith Committee on Hillel;
National Hillel Commission.
HEALTH CARE SERVICES;
Blue Shield of California, volunteer work with
medical societies and foundations, service clubs, professional
schools, business, industry and labor organizations;
Auxiliary of the San Francisco General Hospital:
He secured funding for the construction and furnishing of a
recreation room for tubercular patients;
Jewish Home for the Aged, San Francisco: He co
ordinated the staffs of the Hearing Society for the Bay Area,
the San Francisco Hearing & Speech Center, and the Jewish Home
for the Aged, in a first-ever program of testing the hearing
of all residents in a home for the aged;
xiii
American Society of Blood Banks, serving as an
active member from 1960 to 1972. In 1974 he was the recipient
of the Ten-Gallon Donor Award.
Irwin Memorial Blood Bank, receiving the Extra
ordinary Volunteer Service Award in 1966, and it should be noted
that he was an 88-pint donor.
Jewish Welfare Federation: Chairman of the Social
Planning Committee from 1966 to 1968, which was then planning
and projecting the expansion of Mount Zion Hospital and Medical
Center.
RECREATION AND CONSERVATION;
Strybing Arboretum Society of San Francisco, where
he served on its Board of Directors continuously since 1971.
In 1973 he motivated the planning and fund raising to complete
the John Muir Nature Trail in Golden Gate Park;
Save San Francisco Bay Association and Save-the-Redwoods
League;
Jewish National Fund for reforestation in Israel.
HISTORICAL RECORDS AND ARCHIVES;
California Historical Society: He proposed and carried
to fruition the placing of a commemorative plaque on the site of
Robert Louis Stevenson's home in San Francisco;
Commission for the Restoration of Pioneer Jewish
Cemeteries and Landmarks: He personally conducted working groups
of Temple Emanu-El confirmands to these cemeteries in the Mother
Lode Country;
xiv
His contribution to the Sierra Club, in organizing
its project to protect the Club's valuable archives, and the
program of oral interviews with prominent conservationists,
is covered in a separate introduction to Marshall's memoirs
written by Richard M. Leonard;
Congregation Emanu-El, as consultant on Temple history;
Judah L. Magnes Memorial Museum, on whose board he
served in 1962;
The record should also show Marshall's volunteer ser
vices on behalf of the State of Israel and Soviet Jewry through
his work with the United Jewish Appeal, the Joint Distribution
Committee, and the Jewish Community Relations Council.
Marshall loved the city of his birth and knew it well -
its streets, buildings, parks, playgrounds, bridges and water
front. He loved being Jewish. His Jewishness was so completely
natural, so totally a part of his personality.
The events of our times tend to discourage most of us,
but Marshall never gave up; he just could not be disenchanted.
His inexhaustable energy, his irrepressable enthusiasm and good
humor, his courage and stamina, his devotion to the Jewish people
and to the public welfare, stamps him as the symbol of the
dedicated layman and teacher. His personal credo, perhaps, can
be summarized in the words of Moses Maimonides, the great Jewish
rabbi, philosopher, physician, scholar and teacher (1135-1204):
"May there never develop in me the notion that
my education is complete, but give me the
strength and leisure and zeal continuously to
enlarge my knowledge."
########
23 May 1978
San Francisco, California
XV
INTERVIEW HISTORY
Marshall Kuhn was interviewed in order to document his substantial
contributions to the Jewish community in which, for more than forty years,
he was a vital force as an organizer, educator and fundraiser. Initially,
his oral history memoir was planned to be one in a series on
"San Francisco Jews of Eastern European Origin, 1880-1940" a primarily
volunteer project jointly sponsored by the Western Jewish History Center
of the Judah L. Magnes Memorial Museum, and the San Francisco Bay Area
Chapter of the American Jewish Congress. It was later made a part of
Magnes Museum's history series on Jewish Community Leaders.
Early in May, 1977, when I telephoned Mr. Kuhn and invited him to
record his memoir through a number of planned interview sessions, he
expressed reservations about the importance of his experiences to the
project. I assured him that he fitted the guidelines of the project:
he was of Eastern European origin, had lived in San Francisco since
his birth, and his recollections would be noteworthy both to the Jewish
and the secular communities because of his significant activities
as an educator and volunteer leader. With his reservations dispelled,
Mr. Kuhn readily agreed to the interviews, assuring me that he would
work hard on being scintillating. Although I assured him that
scintillation was not a requirement of the project, it was apparent
throughout the interviewing process that that was not a problem for
Marshall Kuhn; scintillation was a basic component of his personality.
Our first meeting took place on May 15, 1977, after he had reviewed
the outline of the discussion topics which I had previously mailed to
him. All of the interviews were conducted at the Kuhn home, 30 Seventh
Avenue in San Francisco, situated in a lovely tree-lined street
that ends at the Presidio wall. A spacious, comfortably furnished home
reflected the family, the intellectual, and the community life shared
throughout the years by Marshall and Caroline Kuhn and their three
children.
Marshall and I taped all of our interviews seated before the fireplace
in the gracious living room. From there, I could look out the bay window
to the trees on Seventh Avenue, or admire the Sierra Club photographs, ot
the Max Pollack etching, a recent gift from Temple Emanu-El. In the hall
beyond were shelves of books, and a United Jewish Appeal "Man on the Go"
award statue. Beyond that was the large dining room, which, according
to friends of the Kuhns , has been the scene of many dinner parties alive
with sparkling and witty discussions.
xvi
The cordial, but formal tone set in the first interview session
changed gradually to one of warm informality long before we had completed
the ninth session and the seventeen recorded hours, during which Marshall
looked back on his life as an important catalyst in the San Francisco
community. We usually worked between 7:30 and 9:00 at night, although
occasionally we continued on until 11:00 o'clock; several times we met
in the afternoon. Regardless of the time, we always talked for a
while after we finished recording on topics ranging from Judaism and the
Jewish community to our thoughts about families, values, death, and the
problems that people face in relating to the serious illnesses of their
friends. Marshall's pervasive Jewish consciousness came through in all
of these discussions.
Caroline Kuhn, Director of Counselling and Guidance at Cathedral
High School in San Francisco, was usually busy in another part of the
house during interviews. It was she, by design and effort, who made
possible the quiet environment in which we worked. She took time for
greetings and farewells, and occasional small talk. Eventually, I met
the Kuhn's grown children — daughters Alyson and Nancy, who work in
San Francisco, and son Bruce, employed in Daly City.
Marshall, when I met him, was already suffering from amyotrophic
lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease), but he was working full-time
at his office. Shortly thereafter, limited by his health, he shifted to
working at home part-time with the aid of a secretary and a telephone.
Despite ill health and a busy work and community volunteer schedule,
he was always superbly prepared for his interviews. To enhance and
enrich the memories of his experiences and the sense of his intimate
contacts with so many of the leaders in the San Francisco community, he
made use of his copious files and his numbered, 12x14 rectangular plastic
tubs full of correspondence and other memorabilia which I was free to
study, and from which I could select relevant samples to include in this
memoir. The bulk of this exceptional collection has been deposited
in the archives of the Western Jewish History Center of the Judah L. Magnes
Memorial Museum in Berkeley.* The remainder, that which relates to the
Sierra Club, has been deposited in The Bancroft Library, the designated
repository for all of the Sierra Club papers.
Gradually, during the year in which we worked, Marshall had to rely on
a more continuing use of a portable respirator. Electrical interference
from that equipment caused severe static in some parts of the tapes; the
ensuing difficulties in the transcription were clarified later in revue
sessions. As there developed an urgency to complete the interviews because
of the progression of his illness, Caroline, Nancy, and Alyson took a greater
part in the process by gathering photos and additional files from "The Pit,"
Marshall's other office in the basement.
*Tape recordings of all interview sessions will also be found on deposit at
the Western Jewish History Center of the Judah L. Magnes Museum in Berkeley.
xvii
In December, 1977, the board of directors of the Western Jewish
History Center decided that since Marshall Kuhn was a major Jewish
community leader, his memoir should be included in their Jewish Community
Leaders Oral History series, which is produced for the Magnes Museum
by the Regional Oral History Office. The assignment of completing the
memoir was transferred, and I was asked by Willa Baum, head of that office,
to join the staff in order to handle all the editorial tasks which remained.
Marshall was delighted by this recognition and he continued to work with
energy and enthusiasm.
We recorded additional material even as we reviewed the transcripts
of earlier interviews. Ann Lage, who with her husband, Ray, is
co-chairperson of the Sierra Club History Committee which had been
organized by Marshall, came in to record his experiences with the Sierra
Club and its history committee. She reviewed with him the transcripts
of other taping sessions. Marshall completed the major share of the
review with the help of two close friends, Ruth and Morton Macks, to whom,
during lengthy sessions, he dictated changes and additions. Gary Haas
assisted by making many photographs available for the volume and for
deposit in the archives.
Seemingly undaunted by his ailment, and by the required use of a
still more powerful respirator, Marshall also continued to conduct
organizational meetings at his home. Graduate students, administrators,
and authors sought appointments. Phone calls occasionally interrupted
our taping sessions; callers wanted his insights on organizational matters,
policy analyses, procedural strategy, and the names of people to nominate
for vacant positions on community boards. Marshall, a large man with a
strong presence and a seemingly inexhaustible bounty of ideas, was a
resource on people, organizations, and agencies, and he knew, instinctively,
it seemed, how to weave all these separate threads together to accomplish
a specific purpose. His responses could be dynamically supportive if he
were in agreement with an idea or proposal, and they could be equally
dynamic if he disagreed. One always knew where Marshall Kuhn stood on an
issue. His memoir reflects his bursting-at-the-seams mental energies and
opinions.
We held our last meeting on May 6, 1978, having decided that our
work together had been completed. We had been preparing this oral history
for nearly one year. Then, as was our custom, we talked about young
adults and our hopes for the growth and change in our own children. At one
point Marshall asked, "Are you changing?" When I answered, "Yes, aren't you?"
he responded dynamically with a twinkle in his eyes, and a smile, "Hell,
yes!" We then discussed some of his yet unfulfilled goals: the establishment
of a fellowship in conservation history at the University of California,
Berkeley; finding ways to implement the purchase of copies of the Sierra
Club oral histories; and the completion of arrangements to bring
xviii
Charles Angoff, the author he so greatly admired, to give a series of lectures
in the Jewish community of the Bay Area.
A week later Marshall entered the hospital. Caroline Kuhn telephoned
me with the sad, yet expected news that Marshall had died on May 18, 1978.
Elaine Dor f man
Interviewer-Editor
February 1979
Regional Oral History Office
The Bancroft Library
xvix
BRIEF BIOGRAPHY
1916
1927
1927
1929
1932
1933
1934-1937
1935
1935-1936
1936-1942;
1946-19531
1937
1939
1940-1941
1940-1942
1942-1945
1946-1970
1947
1947-1948
1948-1949
1949
1949
1950
1950-1961
1953-1970
1955, I960)
1965-1967 )
1955-1970
1957-1960
1958
1962
1962
Born, San Francisco, California
Graduate, Sutro Grammar School
Father died
Bar Mitzvah, Temple Emanu-El
Confirmed, Temple Emanu-El
Graduate, Lowell High School
Undergraduate, University of California, Berkeley
Solicitor, Jewish Welfare Federation, beginning a volunteer
career that spanned more than forty years
President, Pathfinders, Temple Emanu-El youth group
Athletic Director, Temple Emanu-El
Office boy, Herbert Fleishhacker , Anglo California National
Bank, San Francisco
Mother died
Graduate, University of California, Berkeley, B.A.
Teacher, eighth grade class Sunday School, Temple Emanu-El
Lieutenant, United States Navy
Hired, sales representative, advanced to Director of Sales,
Northern California, to Manager, Market Research and
Development, California Blue Shield
Founded, Jewish Youth Athletic League
Teacher, Confirmation class, Temple Emanu-El
Principal, Sunday School, Temple Emanu-El
Climbed Mt. Whitney with the Sierra Club
Agent for author Betty West, Diabetic Menus, Meals and Recipes
Married Caroline Nahman, San Francisco; children Alyson,
Bruce, Nancy
Member, Board of Directors, Diabetic Youth Foundation; fund
raising chairman for Bearskin Meadows Camp
Principal, Religious School, Peninsula Temple Beth El, San Mateo
Loaned Executive; Chairman, Speakers and Film Bureau;
San Francisco Chairman, Commerce and Industry Division; Trustee,
United Way of the Bay Area, formerly United Bay Area Crusade
First volunteer co-ordinator , donor clubs; chairman, speakers
bureau, Irwin Memorial Blood Bank of the San Francisco
Medical Society
Prime mover, development and construction, swimming pool at
Camp Caniya, San Francisco Council of Camp Fire Girls, Inc.
Member, Board of Directors, Auxiliary to San Francisco General
Hospital. Secured Auxiliary funding for construction and
furnishing a recreation room for tubercular patients
Member, Board of Directors, Judah L. Magnes Memorial Museum
Chairman, Business and Professional Division, Jewish Welfare
Federation
XX
1962-1963 Campaign Co-Chairman, Jewish Welfare Federation
1962-1968) Member, Board of Directors, Jewish Welfare Federation
1970-1972)
1964 Member, Board of Directors, Jewish Home for the Aged
1965 Vice-Chairman, Young Audiences of San Francisco; created
"Young Audiences Week"
1967 Vice Chairman, Western States Region, United Jewish Appeal
1966-1968 Chairman, Social Planning Committee, Jewish Welfare
Federation
1968 Vice-Chairman, Youth Services, Council of Jewish Federations
and Welfare Funds
1970-1972 Manager, donor recruitment, Irwin Memorial Blood Bank of
San Francisco; first major blood bank to eliminate paid donors
1970 Founding Chairman, History Committee, Sierra Club
1971 Vice-Chairman, San Francisco chapter, American Jewish Committee
1971-1972 Chairman, Committee on Soviet Jewry, Jewish Community
Relations Council
1971-1972 Chairman, Committee on Hillel, District Grand Lodge, Number 4,
B'nai B'rith
1971-1973 Member, Board of Directors; Treasurer, San Francisco Arboretum
Society, responsible for naming planned nature trail in honor
of John Muir
1972 Produced "A Portrait of Federation" for annual meeting,
Jewish Welfare Federation
1972-1973 Executive Director, San Francisco Jewish Community Center
1974 Author, introduction to paperback reprint, Stickeen, by
John Muir
1974-1978 Director, Jewish Community Endowment Fund, Jewish Welfare
Federation of San Francisco, Marin County, and the Peninsula
1978 Died, May 18
xxi
AWARDS
1955 United Way of the Bay Area, formerly United Bay Area Crusade,
Honor Award
1959 San Francisco Council of Campfire Girls, Inc., Luther Halsey
Gulick Award, highest award a local council can present a
volunteer, for involvement with swim pool at Camp Caniya
1960 San Francisco Council of Campfire Girls, Inc. , Certificate
of Appreciation
1962 United Jewish Appeal, "Man on the Go" award statue
1963, 1966 American Association of Blood Banks, Honored Guest at
annual meeting
1965, 1969 KABL "Citizen of the Day"
1966, 1974 Irwin Memorial Blood Bank of the San Francisco Medical Society,
Extraordinary Volunteer Service Award; Ten Gallon Donor Award,
for 88 pints of blood donated between 1943 and 1974
1978 Diabetic Youth Foundation award, medal designed by Francis
Maier, for work with Bearskin Meadow Camp
1978 Temple Emanu-El, Special Achievement Presentation and Award
1978 John Muir Memorial Association Conservation Award, to the person
"who best exemplifies the civic virtues of John Muir and his
or her concern for both the environment or the community."
1978 Sierra Club, "Special Achievement to Marshall Kuhn for founding
the History Committee and serving as its indefatigable
chairman for eight years, so that the Sierra Club's rich
past will be preserved to guide, inspire, and enlighten the
future."
I FAMILY BACKGROUND AND CHILDHOOD
[Pre-Interview Conference: May 15, 1977]
[begin tape A, side 1]
An Overview of Marshall H. Kuhn's Family and His Insights
Dorfman: When were you born?
Kuhn: On December 23, 1916.
Dorfman: Where were you born?
Kuhn: I was born at home, which was 2036 Hyde Street between Union and
Filbert in San Francisco. This is just half a block from the
original Swensen's Ice Cream Store. I've said, jokingly, that
if Swensen's had been in business when I was born, we never
would have moved away I
Dorfman: Where were you married?
Kuhn: In San Francisco on September 5, 1950.
Dorfman: What is your wife's name?
Kuhn: Her maiden name was Caroline Sarah Nahman.
Dorfman: Where was Mrs. Kuhn born?
Kuhn: She was also born in San Francisco, at Mt. Zion Hospital.
Dorfman: On what date?
Kuhn: January 26, 1924.
Dorfman: What was your father's name?
Kuhn: My father's name was Samuel Kuhn.
Dor f man: Where was he born?
Kuhn: He was born in Riga, Latvia in 1873.
Dorfman: Your mother's name?
Kuhn: My mother's name was Agnes Kurlandzik. She was born on May 3,
1880, and I'm not sure whether she was born in Kovno or Vilna,
Lithuania, or Bialystock in Poland.
Dorfman: So far as your grandparents, your father's father's name?
Kuhn: Michael. I only found this out in very recent years. I have no
idea what my paternal grandmother's name was and my mother's
father was named Nathan Kurlandzik. He died in Europe and her
mother was Minnie and she died in San Francisco in 1902. I
never knew any grandparents nor any great-grandparents.
Dorfman: You're not sure where your father's father was born?
Kuhn : No .
Dorfman: Do you have any brothers and sisters?
Kuhn: I have two brothers, both of whom are dead. Both were older.
Mortimer was born in 1911. Harold was born in 1913 and he died
in 1976. Mortimer died in 1953.
Dorfman: Do you have any sisters?
Kuhn: No, no sisters.
Dorfman: Do you have children?
Kuhn: We have three children. The oldest is Alyson, who is twenty-
five. She lives and works in Paris. Next comes Bruce, twenty-
two. He lives in Daly City. Then there's Nancy, who's twenty,
and she works in San Francisco. All three of them were born at
Children's Hospital. The whole family are natives. That's rare.
Dorfman: What kind of work have you done over the years?
Kuhn: I interrupted my college career for three years to work for the
Anglo-California National Bank, which is now part of Crocker,
and for the first of the three years I was office boy to Herbert
Fleishhacker, who was second as a financier in the West only to
A. P. Giannini of Bank of America.
MARSHALL KUHN AND HIS FAMILY
Marshall H. Kuhn with his
father, Samuel Kuhn, 1916
His mother, A^nes Kuhn; brothers
Mortimer, left; Harold, right, 1917
Yosemite, 1926. Parents and cousin
of Marshall H. Kuhn-. Left to right,
Dolly Weiss, Samuel and Agnes Kuhn
March 2, 1974. Mr. and Mrs .
Marshall H. Kuhn at a family
wedding
Kuhn: Then when I got out of college I went directly into the Navy
and I left the Navy after World War II. I began a career with
Blue Shield of California in sales work and remained for twenty-
four years, I was a year and seven months with the Irwin Memorial
Blood Bank in charge of donor recruitment, and then I became
executive director of the San Francisco Jewish Community Center
and left there shortly after a year — on loan, as it were — to the
Jewish Welfare Federation and changed the loan to a gift or a
grant in 1974, where I have been ever since, currently serving
as director of the Jewish Community Endowment Fund.
Dor f man: Which synagogues have you belonged to in San Francisco?
Kuhn: Only Emanu-El and I would say that's — well, my parents belonged
to Emanu-El and when my mother passed away there was no one
belonging until I joined on my own in 1945.
Dorfman: What involvements have you had with Temple Emanu-El?
Kuhn: With Emanu-El? Well, I started out as a religious school student.
I remember the old Temple down on Sutter Street at 450 Sutter and
the Sunday school at 1335 Sutter. I remember when we lived around
the corner here at 610 Lake Street. When I was four, cycling up
on my tricycle to Arguello and Lake to see the building then on
that site, a kindergarten called "The Child Garden" burned to the
ground with its ice plant cover. I remember that because it was
the first time in my life I had ever seen my brothers coming from
a different place than I came from. They were coming home from
school and I was coming from where we lived.
Shortly after that Emanu-El bought the property and built the
Temple. I remember the cornerstone being laid on Washington's
birthday in 1925. Then I was bar mitzvah, confirmed, became the
basketball coach in 1936 and a member of the faculty in 1940,
principal in 1947 to '48, and taught the confirmation class from
'46 to '53 except for that year as principal. Then I left there.
For eighteen years I was principal at Peninsula Temple Beth El
in San Mateo, but all the time living here in San Francisco.
Then when 1 gave up the principalship in San Mateo in 1970, I
returned to the Emanu-El faculty where I have been ever since.
I was vice-president of the men's club, the chief usher, and
the president of the youth group, the Pathfinders. In its time
it was just a young men's youth group and the girls met separately
as the Reviewers. You wouldn't get away with that today. That's
about all I've ever done for Emanu-El. Well, I've done a lot of
other things. Periodically, every five years, they would have a
confirmation class reunion. I was perennially the chairman of
Kuhn: that, but after the last one I put on in 1960 I figured I'd
retire. We had representatives of sixty-one classes present
at that one reunion.
So, various little things here and there for the Temple
but mostly, mostly in later years, I've been involved with the
children. I seem to get along better with the kids than I do
with some of the adult leadership of the Temple.
Dor f man: At Emanu-El?
Kuhn: Yes. Any temple. I consider parents the last frontier.
Dorfman: Your involvement certainly has been more than superficial. Did
you belong to any Jewish organizations, either charitable or
religious or cultural, in San Francisco prior to 19AO?
Kuhn: Yes. Irving Reichert was the rabbi at Emanu-El and in 1934, I
believe it was, he was also the campaign chairman for what was
then called the Jewish National Welfare Fund, which collected
money for national and overseas agencies. Because I was
president of the youth group in what was then my freshman year
at college, he asked me to get some other young men to help.
That was my first involvement in Jewish philanthropy. I
remember collecting — that was during the depression and there
was a series of small Jewish shops on Kearny Street where Bank
of America is now and we were collecting a dollar, two dollars;
five dollars was the biggest. I did that every year starting in
'34 and continuing to the present.
Dorfman: You still —
Kuhn: Well, I'm not collecting those small amounts, but I put in forty
years as a volunteer before I became a professional — which is
quite unusual.
Dorfman: I would say. Did you belong to any non-Jewish organizations
prior to 1940?
Kuhn: It's hard to remember. I would say this. I was a charter
member of the Jewish Community Center when it opened about
1932 up at California and Presidio Avenue, where I returned
forty years later to be director. I went to Camp Tawonga,
which was run by the predecessor of the Jewish Center, the
old YMHA on Haight Street. I was a charter camper there in
1925 and '26. But I can't recall offhand belonging to any
non-Jewish organizations. Maybe the YMCA to play basketball
or something like that.
Dorfman: Did you attend or participate in any cultural activities in
San Francisco prior to 1940 — music, art, or theater?
Kuhn: Well, I attended the theater with friends. We loved to hear
Maurice Evans in Shakespeare. I wasn't much on art. Music
occasionally. I graduated from high school in '33. I remember
going in the fall of '31 with my mother to my first opera. It
was the last season when the San Francisco Opera was held in the
Civic Auditorium before moving into the Opera House and it was
II Trovatore, starring Elizabeth Rethberg and Giovanni Martinelli.
I'll never forget when they clanged that anvil; that sound went
up my spine. I can feel it yet.
Then, of course, in '34 I went to college and then I was a
dropout for three years, as I mentioned, before going back to
complete it. During that period I had a great opportunity
through an aunt who was an opera teacher to usher at the opera
one season at night at no cost. I stood through Aida, which
was okay, and through La Boheme , which was okay, but when they
asked me to stand for The Masked Ball, that ended my opera
ushering career. After a hard day's work in the bank, no opera
was that good.
Dorfman: What political parties, if any, did you belong to before 1940?
Kuhn: When I first registered it was as a "refused to state" vote
because I didn't feel the major parties were that different.
Then, when I realized I was losing out on all the primaries,
I became a Republican because I felt they were a little more
responsible fiscally. I stayed that until 1968 when my older
daughter began to work for Eugene McCarthy and I decided I'd
try being a Democrat for a while; my being a Republican hadn't
helped the country very much. I don't think being a Democrat
has helped it very much either, but I seem to have a greater
rapport with Democratic candidates, so I'm a registered Democrat
but not a very avid one.
Dorfman: have you ever belonged to a labor organization?
Kuhn : bio .
Dorfman: Have you livec in places other than in and about San Francisco?
Kuhn: Well, the only places would be either the time of service in the
war, or I lived several months in New York City in connection
with various businesses after the war, trying to make a
connection with eastern firms. But that was just a matter of
several months.
Dorfman: This was after World War II?
kuhn: Right. My whole experience in New York was during and after
the war because ray naval training was in New York. I guess I
lived in New York City for about six months in my life, but
apart from that it's always been here.
Dorfman: Can you give me the date at which the first person in your
family moved to San Francisco?
Kuhn: No, I have no idea. I suspect it was my father in about 1880.
tie came from Latvia when he was six, so that would be about
1&&0, with his cousins, and I don't know anybody who would
have come before that. I have no idea why they picked San
Francisco. There may have been someone here before him, but
I don't know that.
Dorfman: That was my next question, why —
Kuhn: I aon't know why on either siae. He came because his mother
haa died. He dian't get along with his stepmother, and so
wnen his cousins came to San Francisco he came with them, which
seems to me so utterly ridiculous, but apparently the roots of
that disagreement were very deep. I've discussed it with my
cousin in Israel who has memories of that grandmother and she
was something to contend with.
Now, why my mother came. I think parts of her family had
come before her, and then her aunt went back to the home place
and brought her along on the second trip. But apparently their
memories of turope were so bitter that tney didn't ever talk to
their children about them — which is a great pity. And they used
Yiddish as a code against us.
The only Yiddish I knew as a kid was lasum saroo. When my
father was walloping me for something, my mother would say,
"Lasuu saroo. Sam," and that meant, "That's enough already."
Somebody challenged me on this once and I checked it with
Dr. Samuel Kohs, who's a great Yiddishist, and he said, "One,
you're absolutely correct, you got the words right, and two,
never distrust your childhood memories. They're always correct."
Dorfman: Did you ever live in the Fillmore-McAllister district?
Kuhn: No, I never did. I've always been in the Richmond district.
You could subtitle this interview High Fog Near the Ocean,
because that's been the weather prediction ninety percent of
the time.
Dorfman: So you have always been in the Richmond district rather than in
any of the other small Jewish neighborhoods in San Francisco?
Kuhn: Right.
Borfman: What was your address here in the Richmond district?
Kuhn: Well, we moved from Hyde Street to 610 Lake, and then about when
I was six we moved to a brand new flat at 4720 California. About
three years after that we moved to 439 15th Avenue, which was the
nicest place we ever lived. When I was eleven, in 192S, my
father diea there, and then we moved a year later to 280 17th
Avenue, then to 3876 California Street, and then to 158 3rd
Avenue and 152 3rd Avenue. Then to 130 Lake Street, When I was
twenty-two, I was living with my mother there and she passed
away .
Then I lived with my brother and his wife at 481 35th Avenue
for a few months, and then with my eldest brother at 3234 Clay
Street for a few months. Then I moved to Berkeley, where I
lived at International House, and graduated and went into the
service. It sounds like I lived on a moving truck. [Laughter]
Dorfman: It sounds as though you know San Francisco's geography. Can you
list for uie the major events in your life and the approximate
dates?
Kuhn: I would say my enrollment in Sutro Grammar School, which would
be in January, 1923. That's right, I would have been just six.
That would be a major date. At that time elementary schools
did not automatically have kindergartens, so I had gone to a
kindergarten but it had been a private one. Sutro was an
outstanding school. There were eight grades and I definitely
feel that I got off to a very good academic start there. They
had splendid teachers.
Then the next key, that would be my father's death. I think
that's the one single most traumatic event in my life. Here
was this healthy man of fifty-four who had no symptoms that I
had seen (although I was told later that he had been warned
that ne was working too hard) and he died in his sleep at night.
My mother was a widow; this was in 1928. [She was] completely
unqualified — I won't say completely — but unqualified to carry on
his business, which was the wholesale baker's and confectionery
supplies. We were going into the depression. I have no idea
how much my father left my mother, but whatever he left her
lasted through the depression until her death in 1939. But if
prosperity had stayed and prices and rents had remained high,
she wouldn't have made it, which is an unusual way of looking
Kuhn :
at the depression,
with that.
I don't know what Studs Terkel would do
Dorfman:
Kuhn :
Dorfman;
I would not say that my bar mitzvah and confirmation really
were big, significant events because of the way they were done,
which I may comment on about Temple Emanu-El later.
Certainly entering Lowell High School in January, 1930 was
a key event. That was another splendid school. Then entering
the University of California at Berkeley in January, 1934. I
left there in April, '37, just walked out, and came back in
August, '40 after working three years for the bank. I would
say that in July, '40, when I went for a week's hike to the
High Sierra camps in Yosemite, to which I've returned with
my kids many times since, I spent a week up there thinking
about what I should do and decided to quit my job and go
back to the University if they would have me. That certainly
is a significant date.
Then, of course, December 7, 1941, Sunday morning, when I
was bringing a class home from a field trip. My eighth graders
at Temple Emanu-El were taken that morning to the Jewish Home
for the Aged and we turned on the car radio and heard the news
of Pearl Harbor. The following April I left graduate school
at Berkeley and went into the navy. Now, do you want other
key events or just the pre-1940 events?
Let's take the pre-1940 period for the time being. What major
traveling have you cone?
Ihe first trip I ever made outside of the state was in 1938
when two friends and I drove around the western states. We
drove for over thirteen days, 4,500 miles, and the cost for
each of us was a penny a mile — for everything — and it just
opened a new world to me because I became a nut on national
parks. We went to Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, Montana —
to Glacier National Park. Just an unbelievable trip.
The next year, '39, one of the fellows that was with me the
previous year, Merv Silberman, decided to get a new car in
Detroit. So, we took the train from here to Detroit, got a
new car, and drove across to see the New York World's Fair,
down to Washington, and back across the country. That was a
three-week trip. I don't know why I should stress these dollar
figures except comparatively: for three weeks, exactly $150
total.
Too bad we can't translate that now.
I'd like to do it for a day.
before I was in the service.
That was the only traveling I knew
Dorfman: Have you traveled abroad?
Kuhn: When I was in the service I made five trips to Australia, New
Zealand, and i\ew Guinea. In 1961 when I was going to be campaign
co-chairman for the Federation the next year and subsequently in
'63 as well, I traveled through Denmark, Austia, Morocco, and
France, and in the succeeding year to Poland, France, and Israel,
which also were unforgettable trips. They make you wonder which
is tne illusion and which is the reality.
But before that I was pretty isolated. You just didn't all
of a sudden buy a plane ticket when college closed and go over
to Europe for the summer. Nobody could do it. You didn't have
the money; you didn't have the imagination. Even to let me go
to isew York to the world's Fair, I was twenty-two and my mother
had certain reservations about it.
In fact, when my father died she sort of clamped back on me.
I was the youngest one and I was the only one she really had
control over. She took me out of the traffic patrol so I would
be home sooner and leave later. Very bad. It had a great effect.
I don't blame her because she only did what she thought was best,
but it had a very great effect on me, not having a father.
That changed my whole career in sports because I had to work
after school when I was starting high school, and somehow because
of my brother Harold's experience at Lowell High School, which
had a horrible gym, I spent the first two and a half years in
ROTC, so I rarely got a chance to play during the day or after
school. I was working for a wholesale jeweler and I didn't have
the athletic career that I might otherwise have had. Sports
have been a big part of my life.
Dorfman: What are your special interests now?
Kuhn: Now my special interests are anything in the Jewish world and
then conservation. The things I do on the outside now — they're
far more limited than they were before. I don't have the time
that I used to have or the energy. The primary one is serving
as chairman of the history committee of the Sierra Club, which
was a new committee of the Sierra Club when we formed it in 1970.
I also serve as treasurer of the Strybing Arboretum Society of
Golden Gate Park, and then I'm on the advisory board of the
Diabetic Youth Foundation, which is a children's camp for
diabetic children which doesn't take any of my time at all.
Those are my only outside interests right now.
10
Dorfman: Which would be your —
Kuhn: The Sierra Club is by far.
Dorfman: In which area of San Francisco Jewish life do you feel that you
have the most insight and the most knowledge?
Kuhn: Whicn area of Jewish life? [Pause] I would say in the area of
organizational — I don't want to use the word "politics" —
organizational structure and life: the way organizations are
formed, mutate, and die. That's with any organization. It
makes no difference whether it is reform, orthodox, or
conservative. They all have the same basic human interplay.
I would say anything in the history of the Federation, certainly,
or of its agencies, but basically anything to do with Jewish
organizations.
Dorfman: Looking back, reflecting over your life and your experiences,
what difference do you think it has made to you that you were
Kuhn:
On, a tremendous difference. To be born a Jew, a reform Jew,
in San Francisco — first of all, I traveled around the world on
behalf of our fellow Jews. Wherever you run into somebody they
say, "San Francisco?" It's either their favorite city now, their
naving been here already, or it's the one place in the world they
want to go next. So that's San Francisco — San Francisco in
California in the United States.
And then as a Jew here, there is so much opportunity here and
so little anti-Semitism; as a matter of fact, once you travel
around you realize you live in a golden land. I've never at
any time ever thought it would be better to be something else.
It's just been the perfect place and the perfect time. I was
born at the right time for a number of things.
Irving Reichert, in spite of other reservations I have about
him, had a great effect upon me. I was confirmed in 1932, and
for five years, except for taking college classes, I ushered
every Saturday morning at services. I listened to his sermons
and I learned a great deal from him. I would say that the basic
focus of my character came from what he spoke about and from my
family life, particularly my mother's influence because I knew
her longer than my father.
Chaiiu Weizmann came to San Francisco about 1937. I was just
old enough to be smart enough to realize that I had to go hear
that man. Here was a man I'd been hearing about all my life.
11
I was in my early twenties and I went to the Hotel St. Francis
to hear him and I can remember today what he said, which was
basically, "This is what the Zionist movement intends to do.
If you'd like to help us, we'd enjoy receiving that help, but
if you're against us, please don't oppose us actively. Just
step to one side." Well, San Francisco, being one of the
heartlands of the American Council for Judaism a few years
later, really didn't take that message to heart.
No, I can't think of any place that's better to have been.
But that's just sheer luck.
[end tape A, side 1]
Childhood in the Richmond, a San Francisco Jewish Neighborhood
[Interview 1: June 9, 1977]
[begin tape 1, side A]
Dorfman: First I thought you could tell me what the neighborhood you
lived in as a child was like.
Kuhn: The neighborhood was this very same one where we are sitting
now, the Richmond district. We moved here to 7th Avenue and
Lake Street when I was about three or four. That's right around
the corner from this house. We stayed in the Richmond district
even after I went to college. I didn't know any other districts,
so there was nothing to compare it with, and to my mind's eye,
looking back, it was a district with many fog-overladen days.
I used to say (I don't know if I said it before) that I would
call any autobiography High Fog Near the Ocean, because we have
basically very restricted weather.
Of the boys I went to school with — I didn't have too many
friends on weekends. My brothers were of such an age that they
really didn't have the same interests I did. I won't say it was
lonely. We were certainly unstructured. I didn't join the Boy
Scouts. I didn't belong to the YMHA. I didn't belong to any
youth group or organization — such as the Cubs. All the things
I have tried to do later in my life or organize seem to be a
complete reversal of what I went through myself. I went to
camp two years, but only when my brothers quit, I quit. I
didn't have much guidance. My father was too busy. When he
passed away, my mother was busy. She also didn't have a man's
strength and opposite viewpoint to balance it off. 1 could have
used a lot of guidance in my reading and everything I did. I
12
Kuhn: didn't belong anywhere. I don't think I took advantage of some
of the opportunities that are certainly much more available today.
Dorfman: What would you say the street on which you lived as a child was
like?
Kuhn: The street I lived on as a child would be California Street
between yth and 10th Avenues. It was a brand new house at
4720 California, a set of flats actually. I lived there from
tne time I was about six years of age to the time we moved to
15tn Avenue when I was about eleven.
It was a street of single-family dwellings, of flats. The
houses and structures were of all ages. There were a few vacant
lots and the C Streetcar of the municipal railway ran right down
the street all the way up to 33rd Avenue. It was a street you
didn't play on because you were afraid of automobiles and the
streetcars. You merely came off the street to go in and get a
change of shoes after school and an apple, grabbed some milk,
and ran out to 10th Avenue and played thare because th?t w?s a
flat level street, a long street which was pretty protected.
I knew some of the people on 10th Avenue and on 9th Avenue,
but again I can't conceive of these people being friends of the
family except in one case; Betty Edelstein's grandparents lived
on our block. It's a street I have passed every year of my life
ever since. It's the first time I ever really thought about the
question: What kind of street was it like?
Dorfman: What was your house like?
Kuhn: When we moved into it, it was brand new and that was great. It
was a standard kind of a flat. You came in, there was a living
room, a dining room, kitchen, and three bedrooms. The bedrooms
were sort of — well, my father and mother would have one bedroom
to one side. My brother and I would have one to the other side,
and then on the back, sort of the tail end, my eldest brother
would have his room. He was the oldest , so he always got his
own room first.
I remember one time in 1926; I was nine and my middle brother
and I had spent a month at Camp Tawonga. My parents had gone to
Yosemite, the first and only time they ever had a chance to do
anything like that. Then they visited us at Cisco and while
all this was going on they were having the house painted. We
came home and the place was brand new, spic and span, just as
it had been when it was completed. My father put us both in
the tub and scrubbed all this month's accumulation of debris
13
Kuhn :
Dorfman;
Kuhn :
Dorfman;
Kuhn:
Dorfman;
Kuhn :
Dorfman:
off. Then we had our first mother-cooked meal in a month and
that really — and I slept like a babe in arms. It was just
marvelous. Not that camp had been bad. It was just the
familiar sights and sounds of your own house, coming back from
such a long time, that had never happened to me before.
How did that make you feel?
Wonderful, wonderful. My mother was a superb cook. My father
was a good cook too. As I mentioned, he was in the wholesale
confectioner's and baker's supply business, so he knew how to
make ice cream. At my oldest brother's bar mitzvah reception,
it was unique in the sense that my father got these gorgeous
French rolls and he made all these beautiful sandwiches out of
Frencn rolls. You didn't see this at any other place. But it
was just — well, it's a beautiful memory. Not enough of them.
l\ot enough in the sense that my father died too soon.
What was your room like?
My room? Well, it was my room and my middle brother's room. He
was older than I was, so I guess it was mostly his room. We had
twin sets of drawers, twin beds. I didn't have any collections
or anything like that. I think he had a stamp collection. It
was just the stuff that Donald O'Connor would refer to as — a
guy's got to have his stuff, which means your catcher's mitt
and your roller skates. I was a big muscle man because I never
went through the kites or tops or marble stage or anything like
that—all these small things — because my two brothers were older
than I was. I was always out there socking with them and their
friends, so I never had any of these more intellectual type of
things .
What was your favorite room?
My favorite room? My favorite room would obviously have to be
the kitchen. Every Friday night my father would — not just Friday
night, but that was the main one — my father would bring home from
McAllister Street this gorgeous Waxman rye bread because Mr.
Waxman was a friend of his and the whole family had gone to
Henry Waxman's, his son's, wedding on Sutter Street, the big hall
where every guest had his own miniature challah. I guess it
would have to be the kitchen. So many good things came out of
there.
Could you tell me about shopping with your mother?
14
Dorfman:
Kuhn:
My mother's main source of supply was the market on Clement
Street at llth Avenue called the Checker Market. One time I
convinced them that 1 would go to work for them one Saturday
opening newspapers that they would use to wrap fruits and
vegetables. For all that labor I could have as much watermelon
as I wanted. Well, pretty soon they began to pay me off in
watermelon and I had about two slices. I was through because
your eyes are much bigger than your stomach. My mother would
order by phone frequently and about two hours later she'd
think of something and she would phone and they would answer
and she'd say, "Sidney, did you send the order yet?" He said,
"Mrs. Kuhn, it just left," and she'd say, "Put in another pound
of butter," and he'd say, "Okay." It had never left.
What were the stores like?
The stores? Well, there was a Mr. Cohn, who was the cobbler.
That was a shoe repair store then, and here over fifty years
later it's still a shoemaker's store on Clement and 9th Avenue,
"mere were stores then called Johnson & Nordquist, and Ladenheim's,
Those were men's and boys' haberdashery. They still are. One of
taem sponsored, every Saturday afternoon — when you went to the
Coliseum Theater, a part of the stage production was a pie eating
contest. Because the orchestra leader was a cousin of mine named
Joe Mendel, my mother thought it would be a disgrace if I were to
get up there and stand with my hands behind my back, kneeling in
my new pants, eating these pies off a board, and winning with a
face full of pie, and my cousin being the band leader. So I was
forbidden from participating in this.
This was the main thing. On Saturday afternoon you went to
the Coliseum and you saw Douglas Fairbanks "continued next week"
or Harold Lloyd. You had a stage show and then you invariably
had a newsreel which consisted of three parts — always at least
three parts. They were common. One was the opening of the
bathing beauty season at Boca Raton, Florida, somebody diving
off the board. The second was a horse race and the third was
the Kaiser chopping wood at Doom with these herky-jerky motions,
going up and down with his axe on his shoulder. And in none of
those was a boy of my age interested at all. I couldn't tell the
number of even the horses. That was the big thing, the Coliseum
Theater.
Then there was another theater up at 18th and Geary. I went
to that one the day it opened, the Alexandria. It was "Aladdin
and His Magic Lamp."
15
Kuhn: A few years ago I ran into the owner of the Coliseum, one of
the ubiquitous Levin family, and I said, "You know, I went to
the show there the other night and I hadn't been there in fifteen
years." He pointed his finger at me and he said, "You're the guy
that ruined the movie business."
Clement Street. It's a great street. Now it's almost like an
Oriental bazaar, but it's always been a good shopping street.
There wasn't anything you couldn't get there. Every year, of
course, the merchants put on this Halloween party. But I really
wasn't a shopping person. My mother did it on her own. I was
more of an errand person — if you go fetch this, then you'll get
this — just like a trained dolphin.
Dorfman: What did you like most about the neighborhood?
Kuhn: Well, I liked the neighborhood mostly because it was the same
kind of freedom that has represented San Francisco. If you went
about your business and you didn't bother anybody else, nobody
would ever bother you. That was pretty much the rule. Anything
bad that happened was due to your own stupidity. If you cross
in front of a car, you're going to get hit because you challenged
some fundamental rule of safety. It was just a nice free atmo
sphere — plus the fact that you were sandwiched in between Golden
Gate Park on the south and the Presidio on the north. That was,
I think, the greatest part of it. Wherever you turned, it was
green and you never had to play in the street unless you wanted
to and, of course, most kids would rather play in the street and
break a window than walk one block to the nearest park. This is
why some of our great ideas of having huge recreation projects
fall down, because no one will go that far, even a block.
But it was the freedom. You can see right from where we're
sitting, this backdrop of eucalyptus.
Dorfman: Yes, it's lovely.
Kuhn: Beautiful. Now, when we were here before, when we lived around
the corner, I remember a winter here in which the ravine up here
was solidly filled with water, and kids made rafts and sailed
them up and down. It's right by the Presidio golf course. We
had another legend. The legend was that Mountain Lake here had
a secret connection with the Pacific Ocean. It was also bottom
less. So someone asked, "If it's bottomless, how come you can
get to the bottom?" Well, there was no explanation for that.
"How come it's got a connection with the ocean? The ocean is
salt, but this is fresh." "Don't bother me with facts."
[Chuckles]
16
Kunn:
Dorfman:
Kuhn:
Dorfman;
Then we had another thing. There was a playground here,
Mountain Lake Park, that runs between 8th Avenue and Park
Presidio Boulevard. That's a block away from here and that was
our big playground when I lived particularly on California
Street. You'd be playing along and men would come from the
Veterans Domiciliary Home at 15th Avenue and then we'd say,
"Watch out! These guys were gassed in World War I," as if
that was something contagious, and we'd all run away from them.
There was the Public Health Service Hospital there and this
Veterans Domiciliary Home and an orphanage. There was also an
orphanage down the corner here at 7th Avenue and Lake Street
and both of them had Jewish children. All the Jewish children
were not yet at Homewood Terrace. Some of these orphanage
children went to the same grammar school that I did, which was
Sutro, between California and Clement and Funston and 12th
Avenue. Some of these fellows I still see today. They were
known as "the kids from the home."
I guess every city has them.
Yes, well, there was a string of five excellent grammar schools
all the way from Pacific Heights at Fillmore and Jackson, through
Grant, Madison, Sutro, and Alamo, all five excellent schools.
Sutro I wouldn't place second to any grammar school in this city —
an eight-year grammar school. I went through in seven. Those
were the days when you could get skipped, but after I was skipped
twice, I was still in the off semester. The same happened in
high school and college. I was always a "January boy," which is
a curse.
Sutro was a great school. When we left Sutro after the eighth
grade, I went to Lowell. The next semester, January, 1930, was
when they opened the junior highs in the Richmond district,
Roosevelt and Presidio. So I never went to a junior high school.
What event in your childhood would you say you remember most
vividly?
A Response to Father's Death
Kuhn:
Oh, by all means, my father's death. By all means. It was the
first personal experience with death. I'd gone to a funeral.
My father took me to the funeral of Major Peixotto, who was the
head of the Columbia Park Boys' Club, because he wanted me to
17
Kunn: see a great man and particularly because Rabbi Newman of Temple
Enianu-El, who was our rabbi, was conducting the service. But
my father's death to me was so unexpected. It just came at a
time when really my relationship with him was just beginning to
flower. He had an arrangement whereby on Saturdays and on
vacation days he would take one of the three boys with him. I
wanted to go more than the other two, so sometimes I would get
an extra day. I remember the night he died — it was a Wednesday —
and that afternoon I'd gone to Temple Emanu-El for basketball.
This was in 1928. The religious school building had opened in
'27. The Temple itself had been finished in 1926. It was a
rainy day and I know I got a ride home from one of our neighbors
who happened to be driving by. My father was busy, as he was
every night, keeping his own books. I remember saying, "Good
night, Dad," and the next thing I heard were all these horrible
shrieks. I don't know whether they were just my mother's shrieks
or my father's. I'm pretty much convinced now that he passed
away just in his sleep. Maybe there were some cries of pain. I
just don't know. I later heard that he had some prior warning
that if you don't take off weight and slow down, at the age of
fifty-four you would have trouble. But I didn't know any of
that at that time. I was just bereft.
Dorfman: How did the neighbors treat you and your family?
Kuhn: If you're talking about the fact of anti-Semitism or something
like that, I wouldn't know. I can't really react. I know that
there were neighbors and we had different relations with them —
I think just about the same as here — based upon the age of their
children. My mother would be friendly with a neighbor because
she and my mother were active in the PTA together and made
sandwiches together. I think it was mostly like that, but on
California Street, particularly, I mentioned the houses were
all ages and sizes and varieties, and the people were too.
There were a lot of people there who didn't have any children.
You wouldn't find anybody there like a young person, twenty-two
or twenty-three, living by himself. That's a phenomenon of
later tiraes. There were families who lived there, or the
families where the children had grown up and gone away. I still
have friends who lived on that block.
One of the most interesting families was a Scotch one named
Mink. There were two boys; one of them we called Scotchie Mink.
He was an excellent soccer player. The other was his brother,
Alan, who got an enlargement of the heart. No one really knew
what that meant, except that he was confined to bed for about a
year. I used to go over and play cards with him in the afternoon,
he later died very prematurely in his teens. As I say, it wasn't
18
Kuhn: a block that I focussed on. I wanted to get somewhere where I
could run and play. That was either 10th Avenue, because it was
a long flat block, or the Presidio.
Dorfman: Did you have many friends near by?
Kuhn: Oh, yes, there were a lot of boys on 10th Avenue particularly.
One of them was named Billy Raymond, whose grandmother and
mother ran Wilkins Private School. Billy was an only child, so
he and I were pals for quite a while. We went to high school
together. Even though his mother by then was running the private
school by herself, she couldn't control Billy and hired me to
tutor him and objected to my prices. [Chuckles]
Dorfman: As you look back on those years now, what kind of childhood
would you say you had and how did it seem to you then?
Kuhn: To me it seemed a little sad because of its unstructured nature.
I didn't have a dad to go to the ballgame with, not that I would
ever blame him. I knew how busy he was. He really worked himself
to death for us. But 1 just didn't know how to manage going from
one end of the city to the other and, of course, after my father
passed away my mother was very overprotective. There were so many
things that I could have done. Whether it was because of my own
shyness or lack of direction — I just don't know. I think part of
it was the fact that my brothers took advantage of me and so did
the world. Let me give you an example.
When I went to camp at the age of eight, to Lakeport, Camp
Tawonga, you were supposed to be a minimum of ten. But here were
my two older brothers, so the camp accepted me. It was a temporary
site, so the first two weeks you'd get the camp in shape for the
kids coming the third or fourth week or who were staying over for
two more weeks. When we finished this croquet court, I said,
"Let's play on it." "You can't play. You're too young." I said,
"I wasn't too young to build it." "Well, you're too young to
play on it." That carried through for softball, and I think it's
not fair. A little kid hasn't got a chance; that's what I really
meant.
Dorfman: That's something that stayed with you?
Kuhn: Because nobody up to the top of the camp did anything about it.
No one took the little kid's part.
Dorfman: Especially as relates to Jewish life, what would you say were the
major events that you remember from those years?
19
Kuhn: I have to assume that my parents had very little Jewish life at
home, or brought very little Jewish life with them from Europe.
I don't remember one holiday or festival being observed at home
other than the Japanese cleaning man came on Friday. The house
was spotless, and the china, my mother's linen, and the silver —
everything was just beautiful. Of course, as I said, my father
brought the breads home and we had beautiful candles. I think
my first recognition of it though was when my father joined
Temple Emanu-El, both for himself but primarily so that the
three of us could go to religious school. Rabbi Newman was the
rabbi then and he used to pack them into the Temple Emanu-El.
Eugene O'Neill and his plays, and Sinclair Lewis's books to some
extent — that was the fare for his sermons. The whole community,
Jewish and non-Jewish, used to pack the Temple.
My middle brother was a Boy Scout in Troop 17, the Temple-
sponsored troop, and he would take me along as a visitor.
Meanwhile, my parents were at the service. Then by the time
the service was finished, my brother and I would go home with
our parents. We'd walk around and get a soda. One time we
walked all the way down to — it was either Blum's at California
and Polk or some other place along the way. But my father had
just had a brand new suit made and he was really in his element.
This is the only way that the troop could survive — that they
didn't compete with the services. I've given Magnes [Museum]
a lot of material on that Boy Scout troop, but that was the only
way they could do it, if they held the scout meeting so that any
boys whose parents were in services could go home with them.
Troop 17 always met on Friday night because the boys had no
homework that night. This, however, created a conflict between
the scout master and the rabbi, particularly if the rabbi felt
that a scout meeting violated the Sabbath. However, after three
months on the job, as it were, every rabbi became an ardent
advocate of Troop 17. And we never heard complaints from that
rabbi again.
Dorfman: And it worked?
Kuhn: It worked.
Recollections of the Fillmore District
Dorfman: From your knowledge of the Fillmo re-McAllister area, and I know
that you never lived in the Fillmore, but from your knowledge of
the Fillmore-McAllister area up until 1940, would you define it
as a Jewish ghetto?
20
Kuhn: Well, if you mean as a ghetto in the sense of it's being self-
imposed, I would say yes, because the people not only lived
there but they worked there. Any place where you can go to
work just by walking half a block or two blocks, you can work
an infinite number of hours. And so can members of your family.
You don't need a phone. You just have to yell out the back
window.
I didn't know any boys there except the ones I met at camp
and I didn't know specifically where they lived. I just knew
they lived "over there." For us it was a place for really great
shopping for kosher Jewish foods. The only other times I was
over there, as I look back, were: First, when you went to get
your medical examination to go to Camp Tawonga, you went to the
old YMHA on Haight Street. Second, my father took me to see the
dedication of the Central Hebrew School, the Talmud Torah, run
by the Jewish Education Society, which is now the Bureau of
Jewish Education. He did that because again he wanted me to
hear — 1 don't know if he wanted me to hear, but he wanted to
hear — Rabbi Newman, who was giving the dedicatory address. Of
course, above this building at Buchanan and Grove there was for
many years the office of the Hebrew Free Loan Association.
Right in the same block, incidentally, was a place my father
dealt with, which is one of the world's biggest butterball
factories [chuckles], and I knew where that was. Years later
this factory manufactured the Annabelle Bar, which was a
marvelous confection of marshmallows , the owner having named
the bar after his daughter, Annabelle Goldberg. The only girl
I know after whom a candy bar was named.
But it was a shopping place. A couple of other occasions the
family would go to a kosher place. There was a kosher restaurant
on Webster Street, White's. There were two of them around the
corner on Golden Gate Avenue. There we went for a kosher meal.
But we didn't go to a synagogue anywhere near there. It was an
area which I knew was Jewish, but it wasn't my kind of Jewish.
It wasn't any better; it wasn't any worse. But until I got to
high school and realized that these were the same kids that I
had met at camp, that this was where they were really from — but
I still didn't go down to visit them there. Our lives were just
apart. Our lives were defined by where we lived, and I was a
Richmond district boy. I guess if these guys would have come up
to where I lived they would have been just as foreign as if I
went down to their place, except their food was better. [Chuckles]
There was no need for them to move.
21
Brothers: Mortimer and Harold Albert Kuhn
Dorfman: You told me that you had several brothers.
Kuhn: Two brothers.
Dorfman: Could you tell me a little bit about them?
Kuhn: Yes. The oldest brother was named Mortimer and he was born in
1911. He had the distinction of being a student in the first
Montessori school that Madame Maria Montessori ever conducted
outside of Italy — at the Panama Pacific International Exposition
in 1915. Years later, when my oldest child was taking a course
in nursery education at UC Irvine, she wrote me that she had to
get this book, The Montessori Method. I wrote her back saying,
"You don't have to get it at all. You've got it. You've got an
autographed copy. No one in the class, including the professor,
will have that." But it's right in this house now.
He was very mechanically inclined, not so academically inclined.
As he grew up in school he had a lot of problems because of his
nonconformity in academic things. For example, when he was in
high school he worked with one of the teachers who nowadays I
would know was a child psychologist. Then it was just my brother
working with Mr. Bronson. You had to guess what that meant, you
see.
During World War II he was in the Merchant Marine. He was very
much interested in radio. He was a radio ham. I lived with him
for a while, after my mother passed away, on the top floor of a
residence on Clay Street near Presidio Avenue. He had a trans
mitter with 1,000 volts, and I can tell you, when he hit the key
you could read the message by the dimming of the lights in the
house, the entire house. You could walk on the roof with a little
light globe unconnected with anything and it would light up and
go dim depending upon the nodes. Unbelievable.
Anyway, he had a life that was all black and white. There was
no grey in my brother's life. He would get mad at you for two or
three years and then he would be your pal for two or three years.
He never married. I think he led an extremely lonely, sad life.
In the last few years he was plagued by hypertension at a time
when there really were no drugs that could give you proper relief.
He had a sympathectomy. That didn't bring him any relief and he
finally died at about forty-three years of age of a coronary.
Really, really a sad life because he had this genius with his
hands. He could make anything. He had learned to do engraving
of silver saddle ornaments. If he had a friend he'd make him any
kind of ornament or pin.
[end tape 1, side A]
22
Kuhn:
Dorfman:
Kuhn:
[begin tape 1, side B]
But the understanding was that then the friend was obligated to
give him something. This is a syndrome, I've found, of many
people who lead a life of solitude. They have to mark things
off, one against the other, because literally in many cases
that's all they have. It's very sad.
Now, my middle brother, who just died a year ago at the age of
sixty-two, was Harold Albert Kuhn. He adopted the initials H.A.K.,
or HAK. He had good grades in school, a good athlete, active in
the scouts. When he graduated from Lowell, my mother was a widow,
so my brother decided he would forego college and he studied
accounting at night. That meant that almost six out of every
seven nights he either was in accounting school or studying.
And he passed the CPA exam the first time he took it. He really
had remarkable powers of concentration.
Then he married. He had three sons. Later on he was divorced.
For many years he and I were somewhat estranged. But then we
healed our differences in the last five to ten years of his life.
We were very, very close, much closer than we had ever been
before. We had been very close before, because in our teens he
and I had done all sorts of things together. We had rowed on
Stow Lake together (he was an excellent oarsman) , climbed every
bit of Mount Tamalpais, and he was very much a conservationist,
as am I. He loved particularly the bay. In 1968 he had his
first coronary, and a series of coronaries thereafter, until
finally the last one was in March, 1976.
But my oldest brother would be on good terms with either my
brother HAK or me — one or the other — but never both. I often
thought that our whole family could have used a staff psychiatrist
almost full time.
There might have been something to the triangle theory.
There might have been. I know from our family doctor that my
parents had anticipated very much having a girl for the third
child and had really bought girl's clothes and were extremely
disappointed when I came along. I felt that actually for the
first ten years of my life I was just fighting to get up even.
So, as I say, from ten to eleven, when my father died, I was
really sort of coming into my own — that "this guy may amount to
something."
It's hard for a child — well, it was hard for me in any way to
be critical of my parents, not only when they were alive but for
many years afterwards, as if criticism were the same as finding
22a
FUNERAL SERVICE FOR HAROLD ALBERT "HAK" KUHN
SINAI MEMORIAL CHAPEL, SAN FRANCISCO
SUNDAY, MARCH 21, 1976
SERVICES CONDUCTED BY RABBI JOSEPH ASHER
OF TEMPLE EMANU-EL
EULOGY DELIVERED BY MARSHALL H. KUHN, HAK'S BROTHER
Rabbi Asher, dear friends, on behalf of our family, I wish to thank all
of you for your kindness to us during the past few days, and for joining with
ns today in this farewell service for HAK. Many of you have come from considerable
distance to be here. For those who wish to visit the family, Michael and Dayle
will be at home this afternoon, while Caroline and I will be at home this evening.
I probably knew HAK longer than anyone, yet there are a number here who knew
hiw almost as long, some for over half a century. You are, indeed, "old friends",
so there is little I can say about him that would be new to you. 'He had strengths,
and weaknesses like any human being, though his might have been somewhat different
than ours. He held positions strongly, hated hypocrisy, disliked incompetence,
and was impatient with those in private or public life who betrayed their trust.
My memories go back to our boyhood in the Richmond District, where my family
still lives. Our flat on California Street near Ninth Avenue was just three doors
away from the house where Henrietta and her family lived. After high school, HAK
vent to work, studying accountancy at night, and passing the CPA exam the first
time. He took great pride in his profession, specializing in taxation, and
contributed articles to accounting journals for almost four decades.
• He loved San Francisco, particularly Golden Gate Park and the Bay. He
introduced me to the joys of Mount Tamalpais and was especially partial to the
sunny warmth of Marin and to swimming at Las Gallinas. And he was ever available
to drive visitors to the City around the 49-Mile Drive and to share with them his
infectious enthusiasm for the city of his birth. To HAK, everything here was
"the oldest, the biggest, and/or the best."
Be liked good things—good food and wine, good reading and good conversation.
And sports and humor, good or bad. We had a standing routine. When he answered
tty phone call, I would greet him, "Kuhnavitch, you're a bum'." To which he would
respond, "Am I at least a good bum?" Then after an exchange of outrageous puns,
be vould ask if I knew who had won last night's Warriors game. When I confessed
22b
that I hadn't even known they had played, his rejoinder was, "It's guys like you
who are ruining pro sports'."
Since his first heazt attack eight years ago, HAK mellowed, softening his
views/ and drawing ever closer to his family. He bore his physical limitations
gracefully/ though he was often lonely. There were so many things he wanted to
do, articles to finish, contract bridge games to play, but saddest, he seemed to
know that he would never be able to visit his son Jonathan's family in Israel
mod gee his grandson Shahar.
Recently be seemed to have achieved an Inner peace. Michael, Jonathan
and Jeffrey were grown and happily married/ and his granddaughters provided him
trlth Infinite enjoyment. Even his death at age 62 was as he wished, instantaneous,
hopefully painless, and as it happened outside San Francisco, causing his family
the least trauma.
We will remember HAK for his many good works, for his service to the
American Arbitration Association, and for his involvement in the Save San
Francisco Bay Association — he was its oost active membership recruiter. He
vas Interested intensely in conservation, from the Sierra Club to protecting
the California Golden Poppy.
Be was a rare bird of a rare species, the genus Kuhn. He had character
and Integrity, and we who loved and respected HAK shall all miss him. But we
will have our recollections of happy times spent in his company, and the certain
knowledge that he loved all of us. This knowledge will comfort us at this sad
hour, as we say farewell to HAK, to you, my dear brother. Your memory shall be
for a blessing.
How and In the years to come, we will assuage our grief through the wisdom
of acceptance in keeping with our tradition, "The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh
away, blessed be the name of the Lord."
4MB
23
Kuhn:
Dorfman:
fault, rather than rational analysis, because a parent can't be
everything to everybody. He's got to be one way or the other,
and they did make mistakes with me. I might have made worse
mistakes on the same things. I think it's also the practice
that the first child gets the biggest share of attention, the
second child a little less, and the third child the least. If
you gauge it upon, for example, the number of family pictures
and snips of hair in the baby book, by the time they got to my
baby book there was nothing in there.
Please tell me about some of the characteristics and the
personalities of your parents.
Further Recollections of Father, Samuel I. Kuhn
Kuhn:
My father was a man who worked intensely hard. He came here from
Europe as a little boy. He ushered in the theater with Sol Bloom,
the New York congressman, and Julius Kahn was also an usher.
Then he started to go to work for some firms in the wholesale
confectionery supply business — Eng-Skell Company. He was a man,
as far as I can tell, who everyone loved because he was the kind
of a guy wou would do a favor for anybody. He loved humor, he
was gregarious, he was a pleasure to be with. He wore a derby
hat.
Every once in a while I'll run into someone who remembers him.
I ran into a man last year, Mr. Herbert Sichel, who was maybe
twenty years younger, but who worked in the same Eng-Skell firm.
Then I ran into a man named Mr. Gallagher on Mission Street near
llth and when I recalled to him who I was, he said, "Your father
was a food faddist." Now, in our house there were bookshelves
on either side of a fireplace. My father had many books on the
Shaftesbury Method (also the name Ralston, I guess of Ralston
Purina) and every once in a while he'd get on these kicks of
these dietary foods and my mother would have to cook hot codfish
and other things that smelled horribly. None of this he laid on
us.
He really was what you would call a curbstone broker. If you
ran a candy store, you could buy almost anything from him and
he'd carry the credit, which means that [went] for everything
from glassware, straws, syrups, sugar and flour, etc. He didn't
have a warehouse big enough, so he would go to the wholesaler
and pick up and toss a hundred-pound pack of sugar on his
shoulder like nothing. One time, while delivering flour to a
24
Kuhn:
Dorfman:
Kuhn:
bakery, he slipped on a banana peel and sprained his back.
That's the first time I remember I'd ever seen my father
disabled in bed.
But [he had] big and powerful, tremendously strong arms,
and a very unique type of handwriting. I think he'd gone to
some penmanship school. He kept his own books very meticulously.
He was the kind of man who'd give you the shake of a hand and
that was it. Everywhere I ever went in my life, I never ever
had to even think of having to apologize for my father. His
character was flawless. That was a fantastic plus for me.
Everywhere I ever went I would be known as "Sam Kuhn's boy."
Did you ever have relatives living with you?
Yes, we did, twice that I can remember. Well, three times. The
first I don't remember, but I'll tell you about it anyway. My
mother had a large family here and she had a lot of cousins and
one used to come every Friday night and babysit for us on Hyde
Street and my parents would go out. This was my mother's cousin
Margaret. Margaret has since told me that the reasons she did
that were twofold. One, we always had the newspaper and we had
hot water. She could come over and take a bath, because at her
place there wasn't hot water. That was around 1920.
Then she had an older sister, Dolly Weiss, who was a wholesale
furrier. Dolly lived with us when we lived at 610 Lake Street
and she adored both of my parents and went with them to Yosemite
in 1926 while my middle brother and I were at Camp Tawonga.
Also during the 1920s, over from Palestine came my Uncle
Nahum, who later took the name Nehemiah, who as an engineer had
been thrown out of Russia, had gone to Palestine, and had then
come to California with the idea of maybe going up to Petaluma
and becoming a chicken farmer. I remember him, going to Golden
Gate Park with him. He stayed about six months. Finally, he
went back to Palestine, became chief engineer of the potash
company, built the plant on the north end of the Dead Sea, and
when it was captured by the Arabs in '48 — he built the plant at
the south end of the Dead Sea. His three children live in
Israel and I have seen them when I've gone to visit there. The
oldest of his children just left here two days ago after having
taught the spring quarter in architecture at Cal Poly in San Luis
Obispo.
The family came from Russia. My father's oldest brother and
his youngest stepbrother were both retail jewelers in Boston.
There was the brother in Palestine and a sister who stayed in
Russia. No one has the slightest idea what ever happened to her
family.
25
Dorfman: Were there any other relatives that you had who lived near by?
Kuhn: No. On my mother's side, her sister Helen lived in Oakland and
a variety of aunts we had were always feuding with somebody.
They lived in San Francisco , but not where you would ever go
over there and ring the bell. Some of them I never even saw
until after my father passed away, and by then some of these
wounds were healed. I decided at that age not to make anybody's
feuds mine except the ones I was involved in personally. Other
wise, I'd run out of people. Did I ever mention my Aunt Rachel?
Dorfman: No.
Kuhn: Well, my mother had one brother and four sisters. The sister
Helen in Oakland and one in the East, Dora, were both married.
My Aunt Schone, who also lived with us for a brief period on
Lake Street, and my Aunt Rachel were school teachers. I never
saw Aunt Rachel that I can remember until one day in 1925 when
she "borrowed" me. She was going over to the University of
California at Berkeley on a wet Saturday morning and she thought
she'd take me along. So we took the big red Ellsworth Street
train and we went to Berkeley, to Wheeler Hall. She had some
business there. I saw her put her umbrella in this little stand
and pull out a bronze umbrella tag, which I thought was a
marvelous invention. We had lunch on Telegraph Avenue. We went
up the Campanile for ten cents, which is the same cost today,
and I thought this campus was the most beautiful place in the
world. I'm sure this had something to do with my going to Cal,
except for the fact that when I went to Cal in the depression it
was the only place that I could have afforded. Imagine having
to go to the finest university in the world, being forced to do
that! I thought of this when I read Irving Stone's story of how
he fell in love with Berkeley when he was in high school and his
mother took him over to Berkeley one Sunday. It was almost the
same thing.
Other than my father's cousin who came over from Palestine,
none of his relatives were out here. I never met any of his
other relatives until I went to Boston in '39.
Recreation and Street Play
Dorfman: Did you have any musical instruments in your home?
Kuhn: We had a piano, which no one played, and I don't know if anybody
ever took any lessons. I only took lessons when I was fourteen.
I got the idea that I wanted to learn the accordion. So they said,
26
Dorfman:
Kuhn:
Kuhn: "You have to learn the piano first." I was so bad at piano that
I completely forgot that what I really wanted was to learn the
accordion. I chucked that for about six years and then I went
back to it. I did pretty well with the "Missouri Waltz" and
"Pagan Love Call," neither of which have any sharps or flats.
But beyond that, that ended the whole family's musical involve
ment.
We did love music in this sense. My father had a wonderful
collection of Caruso records. He would sit in the living room
on Saturday afternoon and my middle brother would rub my father's
head with olive oil and turn over the Caruso records. That was
just superb to see my father enjoying these very, very simple
things. Then when he died, each place after my father died was
smaller and smaller until we got rid of the records. First of
all, Caruso records had no fidelity as we know it today, but
they were really something.
What magazines, books, and newspapers do you remember reading
and discussing?
Well, we always subscribed to the San Francisco Chronicle because
we were a Hearst-hating family, and we had the Emanuel and Jewish
Journal, which was a forerunner of the Jewish Bulletin. I don't
remember any other magazine — oh, yes, pardon me, we had the
Literary Digest, which lasted until it made a huge error on
Franklin D. Roosevelt's election in 1932 and then it went down.
I thought it was a horrible magazine. All it was was a retreading
of articles from other magazines all over the country. It
wouldn't last five minutes today.
The books around — my mother read a lot of American biography,
particularly Lincoln, and she got a great deal of satisfaction
from the whole Carl Sandburg series. My father just didn't have
the time for that. The only time I came out unscathed was when
I was five years old my father bought a twenty-volume set of the
Book of Knowledge and my two brothers fought over the first
volume and tore out about fifteen pages. I didn't get walloped
because I was too young to read and I must be innocent, in my
father's eyes, but not in my brothers' eyes.
I guess if I had seen a lot of reading around it would have
impressed me. The only time I really remember much of it was
when my mother in later life was afflicted by illness and she
did a lot of reading.
Dorfman: What games did you play?
27
Kuhn: We played touch football. That was the main one. We played
baseball, except, to be more accurate, we played softball.
A little tennis. Basketball, not so much. I played any kind
of game. If they had a ball, I'd play it. If it was a game
of handball, they'd throw it, and it would bounce, and the
batter would have to hit it on the first bounce, and we loved
that. There was a type of handball known as "cigarettes." One
player would hit the ball against the wall and call out a
cigarette brand. The player who chose that brand would have
to hit the ball on the first bounce.
On 5th Avenue a boy named Vincent Pampanin lived. He and I
were in the same school class and we volunteered to collect
some fresh wildf lowers one spring. When it became dark and we
still hadn't come home, it seemed like the whole neighborhood
came looking for us. They found us hiking along a road in the
Presidio carrying a huge wooden box which we had filled with
poppies, lupine, and other spring wildf lowers. When they found
us, we were having the time of our lives, anticipating how
pleased our teacher would be the next day. You don't see
flowers in this profusion in the Presidio anymore.
Incidentally, the weather was different then, in the sense
that there 'd be three or four days a year when the fog was so
thick you couldn't see the streetcar coming. You'll never see
a San Francisco fog like that anymore. There seems to have been
a change in climate.
Dorfman: What songs did you sing?
Kuhn: The greatest tragedy of my childhood is that when they conducted
a paper drive for Sutro school, someone put my songbook in with
the old newspapers. I saved the words of every song from "Sweet
Kentucky Babe" to four songs that were on the blackboard the day
after Lindbergh flew to Paris. "Lucky Lindy." There were three
others. Of course, we went down to see Lindbergh come up Market
Street. Any song, patriotic — "Columbia the Gem of the Ocean,"
"My Own United States," "America the Beautiful" — for seven years
all these songs were written down in this songbook. I didn't
have much of a voice, but I loved to sing. I'd love to have
that songbook back.
Dorfman: What was your favorite kind of music?
Kuhn: My favorite kind of music would be sort of camp songs, something
that a group would sing together. One of my great thrills was
when I was fourteen and my mother took me to hear II Trovatore.
The last season of the San Francisco Opera was held in the Civic
28
Kuhn:
Auditorium before the Opera House was open. This was in the fall
of 1931, with Giovanni Martinelli and Elizabeth Rethberg, and we
sat there and heard that anvil chorus and, boy, that sent the
sparks up and down my spine.
I've always loved music. I have a very poor musical education,
but I love it and I don't apologize for it.
Childhood Influences
Dorfman: When you were growing up, what were you most afraid of?
Kuhn: I suspect I was the most afraid of the effect of poverty. I
didn't consider ourselves poor, but I knew my mother had tried
to carry on my father's business after he died. And I have no
idea how much he'd left her. I had no idea how long that would
last. The depression saved us in a way because things cost less.
They were fixed. If there had been runaway prosperity after my
father had died, I don't know how we would have survived. We
were all in school. Sure, I had an after school job. So did
my brothers. But that wouldn't have done it. I think that was
it. I don't think I had any strong fears of death at that time.
Strength of Mother's Values
Dorfman: How would you say that your mother raised you in terms of values?
Kuhn: Well, she raised us with some very, very strong values, however
almost in the sense of unspoken, which I think is a traditional
Jewish way. There were certain things you just didn't talk
about. I would no more have discussed a girl with my mother and
asked her opinion of a girl — but you got the idea of what kind
of girls she approved of just the same. I would say that most
of my moral training came from my mother, although for years I
tried to think that maybe my father was a bigger influence. But
that was impossible; he wasn't there. It couldn't have been easy
for her. I know women who have four or five boys. I cannot
contemplate how that can be done.
Dorfman: Was there much laughter and gaiety at home?
Kuhn: When my oldest brother was in one of his moods or funks it wasn't
fun at all. In fact, there were several times when he just moved
out for a period of months or years. It just seemed to work
29
Kuhn:
jjorfraan:
Kuhn:
Dorfnian;
Kuhn :
Dorfman;
Kuhn :
better if he was boarding out somewhere else and came over to
see my mother a couple of times a week or have dinner with us.
It certainly was much more pleasant for me because while he
wasn't much of a drinking man, if he got to be really seriously
intoxicated, he'd come home and break all of my toiletry bottles
ana immediately forget he had done it. He used to pick on me
until I was fifteen. Then one time he came from behind and got
a wrestling hold on me. I was just getting my strength and I
bounced him on his head and he never laid a finger on me from
tnen on. But this was very sad. So it wasn't a gay household.
It was a busy one in the sense that my middle brother was going
to night school so much and he had to have peace and quiet.
Of the years I went to Berkeley, most of the time I lived at
home and commuted. My oldest brother — as I say, most of the
time he didn't live at home. It couldn't have been a very
pleasant place.
I was going to ask you what kinds of things and events made the
family sad.
I'm trying to think of what we ever did together after my father
passed away — not much. We never went on vacation together. My
miuale brother went to Japan in 1929. My mother went east to
see her sister. I was parked up at Boyes Spriiigs, at a Jewish
resort owned by a friend of ours. My oldest brother worked in
San Francisco. Everybody was doing his own thing. There was
no such tning as a family event any more. That was gone. Now
that I think of it, it was completely gone.
Do you still see any of your childhood friends?
earlier seeing several people.
You mentioned
On, yes, I'll tell you why, because some of them went on from
here at Sutro School to Lowell and with me to Berkeley, went all
tne way to Emanu-El with me. The present president of Temple
Emanu-El, Myer Kahn; his predecessor, Raymond Marks; and I
started in kindergarten and at Sunday school together. Now, I
say, I see them occasionally. Some of them I've known for over
fifty years and I haven't the slightest idea what kind of guys
they really are.
So tney would be not close friends.
Not close friends. Al Cahen, whom I've known longer than anybody
else, used to live under us at 610 Lake. When my parents went
out, my two brothers and I used to raise hell. So Al's father
would rap on the glass with a long pole. We'd quiet down for a
30
Kunn :
Dorfman:
Kunn:
Dorfnan:
Kuhn:
Dorfman:
Kuhn:
few minutes and then we'd go back to playing "off the bed you go,"
which was all three kids on the bed, and the idea was to see if
you could throw the other two off. And this was a racket! Al
I've known for fifty-five years and he's a swell guy, but I really
don't know him that closely. That's just the way life is.
You said that your father was an important influence on you during
your childhood. Who else would you say was an important influence?
I would say my school teachers, particularly Helen Ward, who
taught me in grammar school in the seventh and eighth grades.
Sne was the homeroom teacher and actually did almost all the
teaching. You didn't have the circulation that's the feature in
junior high school life. She was a woman of incorruptable
character, great teaching ability. I think she must have had a
great effect on my life. Miss Ward stressed fundamentals in
reading, writing, and arithmetic. She drilled us particularly
on the parts of speech and good composition, and this has stood
ne very well my entire life, whether in school or college or out
in the working world.
There was no male figure. My oldest brother had joined the
Boy Scouts and then my middle brother joined a different troop.
rie joined the Temple-sponsored troop and he started bringing me
around when I was ten. At that time the age for admission to
the Boy Scouts was twelve. By the time I got to eleven I was
over that initial wave of enthusiasm that's a part of boy scout
ing. By the time I was twelve I was down from the plateau on
the other side and I didn't become active in scouts until I was
an adult leader. So there was no scouting authority that was
anyone I looked up to particularly.
What would you say gave you the most pleasure as a child?
As a child? Play. Play. I didn't have enough of it because when
I went to high school my middle brother convinced me that Lowell
nad a very poor gym. It did. So he had quit gym and taken ROTC,
and I did the reverse. I started with ROTC and then switched to
gym. In the meantime I was working after school, so except for
being able to row and later on to run on weekends, I didn't have
any daily play period. This is a huge lack of balance for someone
who loved to play as much as I did. But you just throw me a ball;
I'll figure out a way to use it.
You love sports?
Love it, love it. That's the one thing I do every week; every
Thursday night I read Sports Illustrated.
31
Dorfman: During this period what would you say gave you the most pain?
Kuhn: Well, if it was before my father died, there was nothing that
gave me pain then, except maybe some of the cruelties I thought
my brothers inflicted upon me. And some of my own groups in
school. When I was in the fifth grade, I was really excellent
in school. But there was a period of a half a dozen weeks when
I'd make a stupid mistake on every single arithmetic exam. The
teacher was just giving it to me. She would say, "Marshall,
shall I get out the handkerchief ?" This absolutely killed me,
although she was an excellent teacher — Olympia O'Hara.
But after my father died, that wasn't much of a choice to make.
Life itself was sad. It was saddest for my mother because none
of the three boys could be a husband to her. My older brother
particularly didn't have that sense of dedication. My middle
brother did and, in fact, he made it possible for me to go to
college because he had foregone college and studied at night.
I just felt tnat my mother had really died when my father died.
They were that close.
Influence of the Jewish Community
[begin tape 2, side A]
Dorfman:
You said that your family was not particularly observant of
Jewish practices?
Well, if you learned something in religious school, it was not
something you could take home. I don't remember a seder at home.
I remember a seder in religious school. I remember Purim in
religious school, and my mother would make hamantaschen, and she'd
shlepp them over to the rabbi's because those were the ones he
delighted in. But we weren't going around lighting lights for
Chanukah. It must have been something that they were never
taught to do and that they felt we should learn. Therefore they
joined Temple Emanu-El. Everything we've created in our own
lives, my wife and I, has just been by starting all over again,
by utilizing the things that we had been lucky enough to learn.
I remember at Temple Emanu-El when Rabbi Newman was there.
Tnis was about 1928. They had the whole school there for a
communal seder in the gymnasium. But, unfortunately, all the
teachers couldn't come, so you had maybe one adult for each two
tables. Before the thing even got underway the kids were throw
ing eggs. It was a shambles. Rabbi Newman and Cantor Rinder
32
Mann:
Dorfman:
Kuhn :
Dorfman;
Kuhn:
Dorfman:
were standing up there pleading with the kids and they couldn't
get the kids to snut up. They sent them all packing home in
disgrace without having had the seder, and it wasn't until five
years later that they resumed on a departmental basis — having a
seder for any part of the school. Oh, when we came home — "What
are you doing home so early?" To try to explain that was sorne-
tning.
I'm sure, multiplied by many times.
Hundreds of times.
There's something I recall now that, looking back, is full of
nostalgia. When we arrived at the religious school on Sunday
morning there was a large sign hanging over the door reading,
"I am early, what a pleasure." And promptly at nine-thirty
when school started someone turned the sign around and it read,
"I am late, what a pity." And years later when I was principal
of the religious school for a year I found one of those signs
and we used it . I wish I had one of them to hang around the
nouse. [Laughter]
Could you tell me some of the details about your bar mitzvah?
Well, this was a very, very sad thing. I needed the job of
delivering papers after school, which was what I was doing.
Cantor Reuben Rinder (may he rest in peace) , who later was a
good friend of mine, just didn't understand this. He insisted
that I had to give up my job in order to come twice a week on
time for bar mitzvah rehearsals. The bar mitzvah rehearsals
were ridiculous because all I did was mouth the broches over
the Torah and Haftorah. I didn't read the Torah. Maybe I
could have been taught to, but no one even made the effort.
So I just came twice a week and memorized these blessings, and
on the appointed day, which was a Saturday, several days after
public school had ended, I was thirteen. It was Chanukah and
my birthday and my bar mitzvah and the Christmas season, and
I got a job, all within four days of each other.
After the bar mitzvah ceremony we went home and my mother
had three or four lady friends of hers. I didn't have any
boy friends of mine. When lunch was over I got on the streetcar
and when down to 717 Market and started to work for a wholesale
jeweler, Henry Elston, for the Christmas season and for two years
thereafter. So it really wasn't much of a bar mitzvah.
How did you get that job?
33
Kuhn: I got the job through Jake Davis, an old friend of our family
who sold carnival and county fair supplies.
Dorfman: What kind of work did you do as a thirteen-year-old?
Kuhn: I did deliveries, cleaned silver in a cyanide solution, wrapped
parcels, kept the showcases in order, and even delivered boot
legged hoocii to Mr. Elston's friends, fearing that if the package
broke I'd probably end up in Leavenworth. Mr. Elston drank about
a tenth of a gallon of Prohibition whiskey every day. I only saw
him sober once and it was a horrible sight. [Chuckles]
Dorfman: That must have been what you were referring to —
Kuhn: Well, it was sad. There was so much loneliness. I could no more
conceive of somebody saying to my mother — or they may have; I may
be doing everybody a discredit — saying, "Agnes, your husband's
dead. You should remarry." Now, maybe she considered it. I
just don't know. But it would be difficult for me to think of it
in those terms.
Dorfman: What was the Temple like?
Kuhn: The Temple was magnificent. To remember in my mind's eye, just
briefly, the old Sutter Street synagogue — and then I remember
being outside of Emanu-El, February 22, 1925, when they laid the
cornerstone on a rainy Sunday morning and brought us all out from
1335 Sutter Street for the ceremonies. Of course, the Temple was
partially constructed by then.
The Temple opened in '26 and the religious school in '27, but
it was just a fantastically beautiful place. It has such memories
for me because this has been my sanctuary all of my life. Yet I
know by having taken people through the Temple and by having
visited synagogues all over the world that everyone doesn't agree
with me just how beautiful it is, because so much of our impression
of synagogue life and of worship generally is physical — sight and
sound relationships, smell, memory — all sorts of things we can't
even define to ourselves. I like a place that's plain, and
protested very much when they contemplated putting in the stained
glass windows in Emanu-El several years ago. Now that they're in,
I think it's the greatest thing they've ever done. But before
they were in, I was really a part of the older generation protest
ing any kind of change .
Dorfman: How do you remember the synagogue during your bar mitzvah?
34
Kuhn:
Dorfman:
Kuhn:
Dorfman:
Kuhn :
Big and empty, which is the story of Temple Emanu-El. I don't
know. I haven't thought about it much, except there was sadness.
My father died when I was a little over eleven. He wasn't there
to be there for me or my mother. I guess my brothers were there.
I don't remember that particularly clearly. But it seemed like
so much work for so little. If I had been taught to read a portion
of the Torah, that would have been something else, but no one even
attempted it. Of course, instruction for bar mitzvah is far
better now than it ever was before — in duration, in quality. It
could have been better, that's all. In a sense, my mother would
have been disappointed if I hadn't been bar mitzvah, particularly
because my middle brother did read the Torah. Somehow there was
an inference there that he was a better scholar than I was — "He
did and you didn't."
Did you receive gifts?
[Chuckles] Very few. As I say, each gift celebrated so many
different things — it's your bar mitzvah, it's Chanukah, it's
your birthday, you graduated from grammar school, you go to high
school — that whole thing. I got a knife from my aunt. I don't
remember anything else. It was a very, very small thing.
What was your relationship with the rabbi?
My first memories of Louis Newman were when I had done something
bad enough in class to be told to stay after Sunday school and
meet tne rabbi. Here came this big man down the aisle after the
assembly was leaving the auditorium at 1335 Sutter Street and he
looked down at this little boy. Ke asked, "What's the matter,
my boy?" I said, "I did something wrong." He said, "You won't
do it again, will you?" I said, "No, sir." He said, "Now, you
run along home," and patted me on the head. And I thought,
"This guy — this is the essence of the Judeo-Christian spirit of
mercy." So I liked him. He was a very jovial fellow. As a
matter of fact, he buried my father, he bar mitzvah me, and
confirmed my brothers. I stayed in touch with him all my life.
I remember going to the New York World's Fair in 1939 and
having dinner at his home in New York. In 1942 I was in naval
training back there, staying in touch with him, visiting him
when he came out here to speak at Emanu-El, visiting him in his
apartment in New York, until finally he died. Staying in touch
with his widow, and when she died — and for both of them, raising
money for a project in their memory in Israel. So it was a long,
lovely relationship. Whenever he would come out here, I'd be one
of the few people he would look up because I'd been one of his
boys .
35
Dorfman: It was a relationship?
Kuhn: Oh, yes. But it wouldn't be any relationship based upon the bar
mitzvah.
Dorfman: How aid you spend Saturdays?
Kuhn: Well, Saturdays. When I was a little kid, I spent them waiting
for the theater to open on Clement Street so I could go up and
watch the pie eating contest in which I was forbidden to compete.
Later on it would be some kind of a game. I might go out to
Recreation Park or Seals Stadium and watch the San Francisco Seals
play. You could get in there for a dime, or in the summer for
nothing. Playing down at Mountain Lake Park or in the Sutro
school yard. Nothing very big because I had no means of trans
portation. My mother couldn't drive. While my father was alive
he worked on Saturday and if it wasn't one of the Saturdays when
it was my turn to go with him, I was cut off from that. [Chuckles]
I'm sure I wasn't studying.
Later on when I was a junior in high school I used to do a lot
of rowing on Stow Lake in Golden Gate Park on Saturdays and
Sundays. I loved that. I loved anything to do with Golden Gate
Park. That's one of our real great blessings here, we were so
near the park.
Dorfman: In what way would you say your family preserved or continued what
might be called old country habits?
Kuhn: Well, you see, there was this conspiracy of silence in which my
father and mother never talked to us about the old country. The
only Yiddish phrase I knew was lasum saroo. When I mentioned
this to some friends a few years ago they said, "Ach, you've got
the words wrong." So, I wrote to Samuel Kohs, who's a noted
Yiddishist, and he wrote back saying, "You're a hundred per cent
right and don't challenge your childhood memories." The meaning
of the phrase was, ''Lay off, Sam; you're hitting the boy too much."
Now, when you asked me about my family, there still was the
family that my father came over from Europe with. Maybe I boxed
them out of my mind. He came over with an uncle and aunt,
William and Betty Mosher, whose name I really think was Mazur,
but which was changed by an immigration clerk. They had four
children, including one who lived in Florida. There was David,
who was a self-taught chemical engineer and who reputedly
developed the process by which clorOx is made to work without
damaging the cloth and was cheated out of his patent. Therefore
he decided he would never work again. He had a younger brother
36
Kuhn: and sister. This sister was Hermina and she was just a household
servant. Then there was Ben, the youngest, and he was a cooper —
a barrel maker, the only Jewish barrel maker in California. He
was a barrel maker from the time he was twelve until he retired
more than sixty years later.
Now, Ben and Hermina had been made deaf and dumb by scarlet
fever in their European childhood. So therefore they were made
to be almost like servants to Dave. When his mother died, he
just ran them around. I guess Ben at that point had retired
from being a barrel maker and he had a pension from Social
Security and the California Packing Corporation. I used to sort
of keep in touch with them. David eventually developed diabetes
and was bedridden and he lost his leg and he finally died. I
kept in touch with Hermina and with Ben until they died.
But their mother had this home at Sacramento and Laurel
Streets, which is now psychiatrists' offices, and nothing could
be more appropriate. You would go in there for a Friday night
dinner when I was a little kid, our whole family and their
family. Here was this weight of authority of the matriarch,
Betty Mosher, running that thing — her children and her nephew.
It was a very warm environment in the sense of everything being
richly colored, books and everything, but you knew very well
that this was not a place where you could get out of line at all.
This lady is not a fun person. So we hated having to go there
and, of course, the moment that she died that was all over.
My father, when he came over from Europe, had had this big
disagreement with his stepmother, who married his father when
his real mother died. And my father came to America with the
Moshers, his cousins. He had a great sense of responsibility
which really delayed his marriage to my mother by many years —
until he could save enough money to support a household. My
mother's cousin, George Weiss, used to tell me that they would
go to a party and they would take my father and turn him upside
down and maybe fifty cents would come out of his pocket. They
would kid him about this. But, looking back, it wasn't a kidding
matter because of the age beyond which it was increasingly tough
to have a family.
My mother's family, incidentally, had a dry goods store at
Fillmore and Geary, and to this day I'm told it was sort of like
the I. Magnin quality because my mother and my aunts all learned
all the skills of needlework and tapestry and petit point and
everything else.
Dorfman: Coming back to any old country customs that might have been
preserved, do you remember any superstitions?
37
Kuhn: No, I can't remember anything like that. No, I really can't.
Superstitions or anything — I might think of some recipes, but
no superstitions. They either didn't remember them or they
left when they were too young. Or they made a conscious effort
to block them, feeling that you are in America, you're an
American kid, you've got to speak English, and Yiddish is our
code. And it's too bad, because in my professional life and my
other activities a knowledge of Yiddish could have been a great
thing for me. But they did what they thought was right.
Looking back, I think they were right. They didn't want us to
feel strange. I've been associated with some boys whose only
tie to the old world was the fact that even though they were
born here, they picked up one of their parents' accents and
they were teased horribly. To prevent a thing like that from
happening again, "They'll never learn Yiddish."
Dorfman: So you feel that actually was deliberate.
Kuhn: Oh, I'm sure it was deliberate. I'm sure it was deliberate.
This is another thing that marked me off from the kids down [in]
the McAllister-Fillmore. There was no code for them.
Tensions Within the Jewish Community
Dorfman: What tensions can you recall that might have existed within the
Jewish community — religious, social, or economic?
Kuhn: Everything I would have known would have been at Temple Emanu-El.
It never occurred to me at that young age (and I'm speaking of
my childhood) that there was any kind of division between Russian
and German Jews or anything else like that. You knew somehow
without being told who were the well-to-do kids and who were the
others. You didn't know then that there were certain well-to-do
kids whose family didn't send them to religious school. Oh,
certainly maybe some of the boys and girls.
As far as tensions are concerned, you're a little too early
for that. I remember during the '20s there were riots in
Palestine. Rabbi Newman later told the story to me that they
had a big rally in Civic Auditorium, and they asked James Rolph,
Jr., the mayor, to bring greetings to the Jewish community.
Instead of only bringing greetings, he gave a fiery speech for
the Zionist cause. When Rabbi Newman thanked him he said,
"Mayor, I didn't realize you felt so strongly about the Zionist
position." The mayor said, "Rabbi, who's kidding whom? How
many Arabs vote in San Francisco?" All you knew then was that
38
Kuhn: this was a Jewish cause, Palestine and the British oil, etc.
But it wasn't a focus of my interests. I'm talking about up
through the end of the '20s. Now, if you want to get into the
'30s or '40s when Irving Reichert came to Emanu-El, that I can
spend considerable time on.
Dor f man: We can pick that up again a little bit later.
Kuhn: All these things you've asked about, I've been unable to help,
until we reach a certain point in my development. The develop
ment of Jewish life and these things either became more accentu
ated into my consciousness or actually were more accentuated
themselves. And then they became clear.
Dorfman: With regard to Eastern European Jews, were you aware of any who
belonged to different organizations and synagogues other than
the German and Sephardic Jews?
Kuhn: I knew there were other synagogues, because if you went down [to]
McAllister-Fillmore you knew it was Keneseth Israel, you knew
there was Anshey Sfard on Golden Gate Avenue, and you knew there
was, as I said, the Talmud Torah. You just knew that no one
would ever say, "Go in there," or, "Can I show you around?" That
just wasn't done. I never went into Sherith Israel until I was
in high school and their youth group and our youth group at
Emanu-El had a joint dance. These are some of the things you
just knew in a vague way.
Now, an Eastern European Jew might be a guy with a long beard
who came around with rags, bottles, sacks, a wagon, or with a
horse and buggy, and whom I knew we were vaguely ashamed of, or
maybe not so vaguely. We had no idea where he came from, where
he lived. We had no real curiosity about it. Someone would give
you a book about him; you might read about it. But just to see
it on the street — no, not much.
I think one of my parents — if I could recall one of my parents,
someone talking to me about it, how this man got to where he is.
But there wasn't that. It wasn't worth the time or the effort,
or maybe they were conscious of it not to do it. I just don't
know.
Highly Esteemed Jews of the Community
Dorfman: Which Jews would you say were most esteemed and loved within the
community?
39
Kuhn: The rabbi of Temple Emanu-El, Louis Newman. Cantor Kinder. I
had a certain amount of respect for my teachers, particularly
my kindergarten teacher at Emanu-El, Phoebe Litzberg Frank, whom
I adored and kept in touch with until she died. The esteem would
be with the president of the congregation, men like Louis Bloch,
Samuel Dirikelspiel (who was Lloyd Dinkelspiel, Sr.'s father),
Henry Mayer, Louis Haas. Anyone who could be a director or
officer at Temple Emanu-El would be a man of high esteem. There
weren't these peripheral groups like the Conference of Christians
and Jews where a non- Jewish Jew would be honored. They would only
be Jewish groups.
Dorfnan: I see, which is quite different?
Kuhn: It's quite different. Now you have to know who has the numbers.
When they say you can't tell the players without an official
souvenir program, that's what they're talking about now. A
non- Jew might think that So-and-So is a great Jew because he's
been honored by a certain non-Jewish group , but the real Jew will
know who is to be esteemed.
There were also the women who were greatly esteemed. Mrs.
henry Harris and Mrs. Kinder were both heads of Hadassah. Mrs.
Max Sloss , who was one of the founders of the National Council
of Jewish Women. Some of the ladies of the Temple who were head
of the Sisterhood Guild. Those were the three basic organizations
my mother belonged to. There was the Sisterhood, Kadassah, and
the Council of Jewish Women, and she really respected the women
who had formed them. It seems you look back now and say it's nice
to be part of an organization that's that old. But when you
realize that at one time they were not old and had to start in
many cases against odds — therefore, they should be more esteemed.
Jewish Education and Athletics
Dor f man: You told me something about the Jewish education that you had
received toward your bar mitzvah. What can you add to that —
beyond your bar mitzvah?
Kuhn: I started in the kindergarten. Miss Frank was my kindergarten
teacher. There were women teachers in the early grades, and then
you got a series of men: George Goodday; Walter Gabriel; Dr. Harold
Lindner; Bill Cherin, who taught me in the confirmation class;
Rabbi Melbourne Harris, who was Rabbi Reichert's assistant. Rabbi
Reichert himself had a big effect on me.
40
Kuhn: Mostly it was book learning. They got you a text and the
teacher taught the text rather than teaching the class and the
individuals. I think that explains it. That was the general
pedagogic method. If you can do in the religious school equally
as well as you do in the public school classroom, all is going
to be fine. Very little originality. No such thing as a field
trip and nothing really to warm the heart at all — no debates, no
inter-school events.
I would be ashamed to be connected with a religious school like
that today in any position of authority, and yet that's what you
dealt with. There was a great deal of repetition. Every Sunday
you marched into the auditorium near the end of the two-hour
session. You started off by reciting the religious school creed,
wnich would have a certain amount of prayer in it, a recitation
of the Ten Commandments in their long form. Kids today won't even
memorize them in their short form for confirmation. So there were
certain things you did learn. You could learn more obviously. We
had a library in which Miss Packscher (may she rest in peace) , the
librarian, had a standard enticement. Every Sunday morning she
broke open a roll of Necco wafers. Any kid who took home a book
got a I^ecco wafer. That's the way she promoted reading — bad teeth
but good reading.
It wasn't all too bad. I went through the usual protests,
particularly after my father died. I asked my mother one time,
"Do I have to go to Sunday school?" She said, "Yes." I said,
"Okay." I realized I had exhausted all avenues of protest. But
she wanted me to be more active. At that time you got confirmed
when you were a junior. When I was in tenth grade, she wanted me
to be in this Succoth pageant. So I said, "I'll be in it if you
give me a tennis racket." Quid pro quo — "It's a deal." One
difficulty was that I was ahead of myself a year in Sunday school,
as I had been in public school. And that was a crucial year,
particularly socially — all the dances. My glands hadn't caught
up with me yet, so all those boy-girl things didn't mean anything
to me.
What I liked most about Sunday school at that time was the fact
that where the Emanu-El Guild Hall is now was a gymnasium, and I
played on the basketball team. You couldn't have stopped me from
being confirmed because that would have taken the gym away from me.
Later on I became the basketball coach. So, never underestimate
to a boy the athletic advantage in a religious school.
If you say, "You've got to be in good standing in order to
play — ," because a lot of these are kids who are not going to be
7 '2" tall. They're never going to make a high school or college
varsity, but they could be a big star in Sunday school. So you
41
Kuhn: make a deal with them: "You join the Sunday school team, stay
and keep your nose clean, do your assignments, and we'll both
be happy." You'd be surprised how many kids were kept out of
trouble — brain surgeons now and so on — just because we had a
basketball team. That's one of the tricks of the trade.
Dor f man: You projected that then into your own team?
Kuhn: Oh, absolutely.
Dorfman: What kind of a Jewish education did your children have?
Kuhn: They had a pretty good one, except I shorted them in this way.
I'd been teaching at Emanu-El and when Peninsula Temple Beth El
started they wanted a principal. So for eighteen years I went
down there and the only one of my children whose religious
education I took part directly in as a teacher was the youngest
one. I went back to teach her at Emanu-El when she was confirmed.
But they all got reinforcement here at home and observed every
holiday. I think they got a pretty good one.
Now, any parent's kidding himself if he feels that such a
statement has some kind of a guarantee or heckscher on it,
because you really don't know until the chips are down what kind
of adult the child will be. There are no guarantees in this
thing. But I think that they got all the basics, because when I
was principal at Temple Beth El, many times I would take my
children there on Sundays to observe the holidays. I'd assign
them certain jobs in the Sunday school, and they were big shots
because they were the principal's children and they didn't have
to do this or that, and they had a good time.
Dorfiaan: So the observance then was a shared one?
Kuhn: Oh, yes. Not as much as it should have been, but, look, the
youngest one wanted me to teach her in the confirmation class.
The older two might not have wanted to be in my class. I'm not
so sure I'd have wanted one of my parents to teach my class.
Dorfman: Not all children would.
Kuhn: That's right.
Dorfman: Do you have any grandchildren?
Kuhn: No, none of my children are married.
Dorfman: What did your parents want their children to be? Did they project
hopes for you?
42
Kuhn: I have no idea. The only one — I think maybe for my middle
brother, because he was really a superior student in the
sense of application — natural ability plus application — this
tremendous ability to study six nights a week. Now, what they
actually thought that would produce, I have no idea; or what he
wanted for himself, I have no idea. I think he became a CPA
because he wanted to be a CPA.
My oldest brother had certain skills. I think he was generally
in an unhappy situation due to the fact that he lived alone and
that militated against any kind of real happiness.
With me, I was just getting over not being accepted for not
being a girl. [Chuckles] I have no idea what they wanted for
me. I had no idea what I wanted for myself. I mean, it wasn't
this thing in the classic tradition that at a certain age I said,
"I'm going to be a doctor." Frankly, it never occurred to me
anywhere through school — anywhere, anytime — to study medicine,
even though classmates around on all sides were going to medical
school.
Dorfman: As you approached college age, did your mother at that point
project on you hopes for achievement?
Kuhn: Well, she haa gone to school herself here with Dr. Monroe Deutsch,
who became provost of the University of California at Berkeley.
That would be the same thing as being chancellor now on that
campus. So I went to see him and he said, "Well, you've got
excellent grades in all studies. Why don't you pick math and
science and start out with engineering?" That seemed logical,
and I did, but I didn't do well. But I didn't remember his words
saying, "Let's just start out this way and see what goes along,1'
and so I carried this huge guilt feeling that I hadn't done very
well.
In those days you didn't discuss with your parents or anyone
else possible changes of major, dropping out — those were all like
social diseases. We were so dumb it's unbelievable. And the fact
that I made so many mistakes myself, I think, has made me a better
teacher, and I basically classify myself throughout my whole life
as a teacher, learning from the things both good and bad, at least
learning enough to look at them. Oh, the fact that you couldn't
talk to your parents is just horrible. There was nothing that
said you couldn't. You just didn't.
Dorfman: I would agree.
Kuhn: Yet my mother was a well read woman. But I just didn't know how to
go about it.
43
Dor f man: It wasn't done.
Kuhn: Yes.
Dor f man: What were your dreams, your ambitions?
Kuhn: Well, I guess at one time, when I was very young, it would be to
be a New York Yankee. When I got to Lowell I got the idea that I
ought to go to Annapolis. I had a friend, a dentist, who had
been in the Navy. He claimed that it was a hotbed of anti-Semitism,
which I couldn't possibly intellectually accept. So I went to see
Congresswoman Florence Prag Kahn, and she said, "Young man, I can't
even think about giving you an examination until I get re-elected."
This was about '31. Well, in '32 she was re-elected even though
the Democrats took everything else. (She was a Republican.) Then
two years later she and the other Republicans were out for almost
forever it seemed at that time. By that time, I'd forgotten that
I ever wanted to go to Annapolis. I did get a Navy commission
later, but through a different avenue.
Then, as I say, I went to Cal and the idea was to get a college
degree for fear that if I didn't go now, I'd never go. And here
iny brother stepped aside so that I could go, which was an extremely
generous act on his part. Then my college career seemed to fall
apart, so I quit for three years. Then I went back and was
studying teaching until I went into the Navy. When you lose four
years in the Navy, you try to figure out, "Where do I patch it up?"
[end tape 2, side A]
Clarification of Childhood Recollections
[Interview 2: July 14, 1977]
[begin tape 2, side B]
Kuhn: This is Thursday, July 14, and we're picking up again where we
left off — in which I had made some statements about my overall
recollections of my childhood as being somewhat a sad period.
I'd like to put that in context. I lost my second brother last
year, which means that over my life, my father, mother, and two
brothers have passed away, and I'm the only one remaining — which
is sad to contemplate. I think that may have given a flavor or a
feeling that that childhood period was sadder than it actually
was, just by the realization that things will never be quite the
same.
44
Kuhn: Also, I've had some problems with my health over the last year,
which I won't go into now, but I think that perhaps has given a
skewed and biased opinion. In some ways I think I had a happy
childhood, although there just wasn't as much doing because that
was the nature of life in the Richmond district at that time.
In the past week, one of our newspapers has started a series on
the districts of San Francisco which would be affected if we had
district elections of supervisors. The first district they picked
was the Richmond because it's the only true district in the city.
The others have been gerrymandered to make the districts. It
points out the Richmond district now is really quite a flavorful
place to live just because of the huge diversity of nationalities
and races — and that's certainly true. It was much more homogeneous
when I was a kid.
Now, during the past week, my wife had occasion to go to the
main library here in San Francisco and researched through the
Pope-Crocker-Langley city directories back to the time when my
parents, and in one case my maternal grandmother, came to San
Francisco, to see where they lived and what they did.
In the case of my father, he came with his aunt and uncle,
William and Betty Mosher. They never lived directly in the
Fillmore-McAllister. As a young man, my father lived for some
years at 302 Valencia Street, which is less than half a block
from the old (and present, I might say) Levi-Strauss factory.
Ke also lived at 1830 Eddy Street, which is several blocks west
of Fillmore. I think later on I'll put in a page giving all his
occupations as listed in the directories. Of course, you never
know how accurate they are because you have no idea who in the
family actually responded to the door-to-door soliciting of
information.
On my mother's side, her mother ran a millinery store at
Fillmore and Geary and apparently lived upstairs. I know my
mother talked sometimes about working in that store, as did her
sisters. She had four sisters and one brother, and for the first
time I found out that their brother Leon actually lived here for
a time. Later on he went to work on the Panama Canal. I never
knew him.
My mother never appears in the city directory and this lent
some credence to a statement which my Aunt Dora made. She was a
sister of my mother whom I saw in New York for the last time in
1967. She made a statement to me which I had never had the
chance — I didn't know before and I never had a chance to verify —
that my mother did not come to San Francisco with her mother and
Kuhn: older sisters. She stayed in Lithuania or Poland until a later
relative brought her over to San Francisco. Whether that's true
or not, I have no idea, but I would have no reason to suspect my
aunt. On the other hand, why didn't it come down to me through
my mother?
Her mother also lived for a time on the 1100 block of Folsom
Street, which would be part of that Jewish community that lived
on Folsom, Natoma, Howard, Clementina, and so on.
At what point my mother and father, during the course of their
courtship, decided that when they had a family they would not live
in the "ghetto," I don't know. I don't recall ever seeing in our
household any Yiddish or Hebrew material other than the Hebrew
textbooks of my brothers and myself from Temple Emanu-El religious
school. My parents, as I mentioned before, used Yiddish defensively
as a private code.
When they were married they lived at 2036 Hyde Street, where I
was born at home. My two older brothers were born in hospitals.
Our first move from there was out to 7th Avenue and Lake, and I
have lived in the Richmond district almost continually ever since.
I have no idea whether they had any attitudes toward this whole
idea of Eastern European versus German Jewry. When I tell people
that my father came from Latvia, I frequently receive the response,
"Yes, but Kuhn is a German name." I had occasion several years ago
to execute an affidavit on behalf of one of my nephews who is
married to an Israeli, testifying that to the best of my knowledge
we were not Kohanim. I think that if we had been, it's likely my
father would have had a better understanding of ritual law. We
would have had some home observances which we didn't have. I'm
not positive, but it seems likely, and so much of all this is
speculation. I am not the only one, I'm finding out very rapidly,
whose parents just didn't talk to their children about these things.
It's a common practice and I think it's one of the two aspects
of this oral history, two really important ones, one being recording
the data of people who are somewhat prominent, the other recording
your own family history for the edification of your own children
and grandchildren. So that one of the purposes, my own purpose,
has been fulfilled by this interview, by making me do my own
research, which, frankly, has been long deferred. I'd been
planning to do that for a long, long time, but I recommend it to
anybody. I've researched the city directories many times on behalf
of projects of mine not related to my family. For example, John
Muir lived in the 900 block of Valencia Street at one time, for
six months, just six blocks from where my father did.
Education as a Continuing Practice and Influence
Favorite Jewish and Non-Jewish Writers
Dorfman: Shall we pick up where we left off last week? I'd like to fill
in on several things before we go on. Can you tell me who had
been your favorite Jewish writers?
Kuhn: My favorite Jewish writers?
Dorfman: Yes, over the years.
Kuhn: I would say certainly — well, the one I am the most enthusiastic
about now is Charles Angoff, because I'm trying to get him
sponsored to come out here for the first time and speak. I think
his Polonsky Saga is just sensational and I think it's largely
unheralded. I agree with him that he would have been a much better
candidate for the Nobel Prize than Saul Bellow. Of course, Sholom
Alechem. Morris Samuel, as far as content is concerned, but he
had the very disconcerting habit of looking for the most complicated
words — the only author I ever saw who consistently used words that
I never even heard of, much less knew the definition of. I've
never really thought of it in terms of — I have many favorite non-
Jewish writers. But I've read so widely among Jewish writers; I
haven't really thought of favorites.
Dorfman: Charles Angoff?
Kuhn: [Spells name.] He dates back to the days of H.L. Mencken. He was
an assistant with him on the old American Mercury and teaches at
Fairleigh Dickinson College in New Jersey. I think he is one of
the most scholarly writers on the American Jewish scene today.
So many of the people who write also speak, and few of them do
both well, and he does both well. That's why I want to get him
out here.
Dorfman: That's very unusual. How about non-Jewish writers?
Kuhn: Of course, of the non- Jewish writers, [John] Muir is my favorite.
He wrote twelve books. Most people who belong to the Sierra Club
have never heard of any of them. They're not readily available.
Anything on the West.
I'd like to tell a story that illustrates exactly where I am.
There was a lieutenant in the Navy named William R. Anderson. He
was in the submarine corps in New London, Connecticut. He received
a wire, "Come and be interviewed by Admiral Rickover for the atomic
submarine program."
46a .
MARSHALL H. K.UHN
3O SEVENTH AVENUE
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA 94118
February 1, 1978
Mr. Charles Angoff
West 86th Street
New York, N. Y. 1002^
Dear Mr. Angoff j
This is a belated response to your kind letter of September
3, 1977. However, during October, November and December
I Immersed myself in "The Polonsky Saga" and read all ten
books, every one of the 5 §30 8 pages, and in order.
Each volume was a delightful reading experience and
taken together, all ten volumes are a tour de force.
I made many notes to myself as I read the books and per
haps some time I will have the opportunity to transmit
these thoughts to you.
When David entered Harvard I thought back to an Incident
that occured on March 15, 1970. That morning I assembled
a class of students at the religious school of Peninsula
Temple Beth El in San Mateo, and their parents. They
were about to visit the Judah L. Kagnes Memorial Museun
in Berkeley to view the exhibit, "The Lower East Side"
Khich was on loan to Magnes from the Jewish Museum of
New York.
I told the children that I had asked the parents to drive
their cars that morning rather than to charter a bus,
because the exhibit would be more meaningful to the
parents than to the children. I quoted to them an item
which had appeared theprevious Friday in the San Francisco
Jewish Bulletin and said that this brief quotation sum
marized to me the Jewish experience in America.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency, New Haven . "Abraham S. Goldstein,
son of A Lower East Side pushcart peddler, today was
named Dean, of the Yale Law School. He is
Prior to reading "The Saga" I had read your book on
Mencktn and also "Something about my Father and other
People". The story, "Rabbi Sharfman" is exquisite.
My father's older brother, 3en and younger step-brother
Abe both were in the Jewelry business in Boston, Abe
-2-
A6b
being in the Jewelers' building at 373 Washington Street.
I shall look forward to the publication of "Toward the
Horizon" and woxild like to get a copy autographed by
you.
I must admit that I have been more successful in my
reading of Charles Angoff than in my booking him to
speak in our community. Actually I began my campaign
in your behalf several years before we met. Of course,
one is always concerned as to whether a person who
writes superbly is also a good speaker. Buf'our spy"
from Temple Adath Israel of Merion reported to us
that you are even a greater speaker than an authorl
Which leads to the question as to why I have been
unable to get my Rabbinical and educational collegues
to absorb my obvious enthusium for your work. However
I shall keep trying.
Your letter of last September reached me Just before
Bosh Hashonah. W th regular New Years behind us and
Chinese New Years* coming up so soon, I decided to
get thbis letter off before Egyptian New Years III
With all best wishes,
46c
140 V/est 66th Street
Apt. 14 E
Eew York, K. Y. 10024
February 26, 1978
Mr, Marshall H. Kuhn
>0 Seventh Avenue
oan Prancisco, California 54118
Ds ::.r J.r. -~uhn:
Jr.--..--k you Tor your letter, ana for what you sc.y about my
^o"_3.:...-:y .-£.36-. I believe I told, you that the eleventh volume
in tl:£ Series, "Beyond the Horizon," is shheduled for late this
year or early 1979. My C-od, did I write 5,308 pp in that saga?
Oyl Yes, sometimes I'd like to read your notes, and perhaps
v:e can diccuss them in some personal meeting. .. .You are right:
Goldstein's assumption of the deanship of the Yale Law School tells
t'.:e ;~ory of the Jev;s in America very well. And so does the fact
-•&=?&*-•• — uiao ~£-ao-t that the Lfrvak Henry Hosovsky is dean of the
vard faculty of arts and sciences . Harvard is the yeshiva I
-..••snt CD, as you probably l:nov;. ... I didn't l:nov: that you had
or.:e v.-.isr.poche in Boston. I ".:nov: V.'ashin~ton Street very well.
i.y father, v/ho v;as a tailor, used to do business with the Filene
b-.rrs.in basement. . .So you read my Mencken book. Maybe you'd also
cs interested in my book, _'he Tone of the 'I'v.'eMties, v;hich deals with
CP glorious and meshuggene period in American history. ..Yes, I'd
love to see you-all , and ploi^er before your conrre^ cations,
interspersing deep seriousness with a few chochmes. lerhaps a
Ion;- weel:-end? Perhaps tv;c or three congregations could get
together? KU, anyway, many thanks for trying and for being such
a fine chossid of mine.
I enclose something that will
interest you.
All best,
Cfcarlae A
47
Kuhn:
Dorfraan:
Kuhn:
Dorfman:
Kuhn:
Dorfman:
Kuhn:
So he got to Washington and his interview was about as rigid
as the one which Jimmy Carter went through when he was interviewed
years later for the same program by Rickover — completely unorthodox
type of questions, ending with the last question, "Give me the
names of the last ten books you read." Anderson's mind went blank.
When he was going back on the train to New London, he was
cursing himself. He said, "I do read! That's the curse of it.
My mind just went blank. I will not let that man think I'm an
ignoramus." So he wrote him a letter just saying, "Here are the
names of the last twenty books I read. I'm sorry, my mind just
went blank."
The next day he got a wire, "Come to Washington," and he was
the first skipper of an atomic sub and took it under the North
Pole, which he describes in Nautilus 90 North. Then he went into
Congress.
I read a lot, but hitting me with a question like that, my mind
just goes blank.
Are there other favorite writers you'd like to speak about? We'll
come back to this subject later. And when you think about it,
mention it if you would.
For vacation reading I'm partial to Stevenson and Twain. I might
also mention this, that for twenty years or more, each time I read
a book, I type a review of it and put it in a file, because I
always have occasion to refer to it and it makes me read the book
more carefully. When I finish it, I review in my own mind the
chapter headings, what the main conclusions were, who the
personalities were, other writings by that author that I may want
to look up, and so on. It's been a very great help to me.
I would imagine.
Part of it was due to this — I used to just list the titles. Then,
when I read Nautilus 90 North, I thought I better write out the
whole review because you put a tremendous amount of yourself into
reading a book. Why not take another half hour or fifteen minutes
and make some notes for yourself when you read it? What it was
about. Even a few good jokes. [Chuckles]
My next question you partially answered,
you enjoyed over the years?
What kinds of books have
Oh, a great variety, a great variety. Books about the Sierra
particularly, humor books, all the poems of Ogden Nash, all the
crazy books by Fred Allen — a great, great variety. My only sadness
is that I haven't read more, because I read very slowly, but I
don't forget anything.
Lowell High School
[Interview 10: February 28, 1978. This interview was recorded
during an editing session with Marshall H. Kuhn at his home at
30 7th Avenue, San Francisco.]
[begin tape 17, side A]
Dorfman: You were going to tell me about Lowell High School.
Kuhn: Lowell High was a marvelous school. I entered there as a freshman
in January, 1930, the semester after my brother Harold had graduated
from Lowell. I went for four years and graduated in December,
1933, just before I was seventeen years of age. I took a straight
academic course with one exception. I took typing, which was then
considered a radical innovation for Lowell because it was the first
break with a completely college preparatory curriculum. Most of
the students in my grammar school class at Sutro went to Lowell,
as did practically all of the Jewish students in the Richmond.
Junior high school in the Richmond district started in January,
1930, so I missed that.
When I was a high freshman, the school was so crowded with
about 3,000 students that after the first period, the entire high
freshman class went up the hill from Hayes and Masonic to Hayes
and Pierce Streets, and we spent the rest of the day at Denman
School, just the high freshmen. And later on I found out that
that was the grammar school where my mother had graduated when
she was a girl. After Lowell finished with it, it became Louise
Lombard, a school for deaf children. Now it's being master-planned
into something else.
Now, the high freshman year was the high point because I had
all women teachers except for one man, Mr. Henrich, who taught
science. He just pre-empted the top floor of Denman into a
museum of botany and zoology. He would take us on field trips
around the neighborhood. We'd have a relay race to go bring back
the leaf of a certain plant or a ladybug, and he would show the
boys how to develop a tiger build. He was really a very colorful
character.
I took four years of history, science, English, foreign language,
and five years of math. Along the way, when I was a high sophomore,
I got the idea that I wanted to go to Annapolis, so I took extra
credits and I really got the only bad grades in my whole career
when I bit off more than I could chew. I took two years of Latin
before I sunk under the subjunctive; then I switched to French.
I did very well. In science I took elementary science, biology,
chem, and physics. I had excellent teachers, particularly in
physics, Mr. Smith and Mr. Robertson.
49
Kuhn: In math, I took five years, including calculus and plane
analytic geometry. The teacher was a remarkable man who later
went on to teach at City College, San Francisco. His name was
A.F. McCarty. He really taught us math as a college course,
advanced algebra. He was just tremendous. It was really a
challenge.
Then I took three years of English.
Dor f man: You were going to tell me about Miss Duffy.
Kuhn: Anna Duffy was a white-haired, bright-eyed woman of Scotch-Irish
descent. She was a master English teacher, she was the head of
the department, and I took English from her when I was a low
sophomore. The first week she gave a spelling test, and if you
got 100 percent you never had to take another spelling test. I
was very good at spelling, so I had a lot of time to read.
Then three times during the year she read stories to us aloud.
She read us A Tale of Two Cities, by Dickens, which was marvelous.
She read us Prestor John, and she read us another story about a
rescue from a submarine. This was so unusual, so different from
any other teacher. I never took another course from her. I wish
I'd taken a course in composition or creative writing.
She later retired and subsequently died and left in her estate
bequests to Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish charities. In the
last case it was the Jewish Welfare Federation. I asked her
attorney how she happened to pick the Jewish Welfare Federation.
I'm going to paraphrase her will, in which she stipulated that,
"I leave this money in gratitude for having had the privilege of
teaching Jewish children" — which is a beautiful thing. I've often
wondered how many Jews have left money for the privilege of having
children taught. A lot of her best students were Jewish students.
Then I took four years of history, including civics under a
teacher who said she wouldn't vote for Florence Prag Kahn because
she didn't like the hats she wore. I thought that for a teacher
to tell her students that was really a dumb thing, because we were
trying to learn about civilization and civics and the Constitution-
as a real subject. Anybody can be prejudiced.
In the junior year we studied American history, and a lot of
that was the Civil War, just interminable battles. Then I had a
course in the history department under George C. Lorbeer, whose
field was Pacific relations. My brother had gone to Japan with
Mr. Lorbeer and others in the Pacific Relations Club in 1929.
Lorbeer was convinced that the Japanese were the most peaceful
50
Kuhn: people in the world, and when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor
it really crushed him. It really did, because he had been teaching
what he'd believed to be true for so long. He, incidentally, was
one of nine brothers and sisters, children of medical missionaries,
all of whom graduated from the Claremont Colleges, supposedly the
largest single family unit to go to the same college in America.
Lorbeer was also the debating coach. And while I didn't debate,
my wife and many friends of mine did, and they really got their
basic skill in forensics at Lowell, including Pat Brown, who was
named "Pat" after Patrick Henry, and a lot of other attorneys and
judges who got excellent training in this from George Lorbeer.
Then I took ROTC for five semesters, which was a huge waste of
time. I just followed my brother's advice. His experience was
that Lowell had a terrible gym, and it did. I didn't have a chance
to play after school for two years because I worked. I didn't get
much play. Then, finally, after three semesters, Lowell dropped
ROTC, and I took gym and had an absolutely marvelous time playing
basketball.
Lowell at that time had a tremendous basketball reputation. I
tried to go out for one of the teams when I was a junior, but the
coach said he was sorry, that I had great potential, but I hadn't
grown up with the Lowell system, so I couldn't play. The Lowell
system was probably as effective as any high school team in
America. They alternated their varsity play with Stanford and
Cal freshmen and beat them. On the first national collegiate
basketball championship in 1942, three of the Stanford team, of
the starting five players, were Lowell captains. That gives you
an idea of the tradition of that school.
The coach was named Ben Neff, an absolute genius in basketball.
I grew to love basketball and I played it, coached it, officiated
it, but I didn't ever play for any school team, just club teams.
My final semester, they brought over someone from Cal Tech
and someone from Berkeley. At that time you had to have certain
grades to get into Cal, plus your principal's recommendation. I
remember I graduated with a tremendous academic record; the last
year was all A's. The principal signed my application for Cal,
handed it back, and didn't say one word to me such as, "Nice record.
Good luck" — nothing. I thought there was really something wrong.
Our class jokester took a class photograph for the yearbook.
We lined up in the court, 350 seniors in a U-shaped formation.
This character was way over at one end, and as soon as the moving
camera began to rotate, he ran behind the group and was also in
the picture at the other end.
51
Kuhn: One of the members of the class, incidentally, was Jerry Flamm,
who has a new book out, Good Life in Hard Times, about his years
as a boy growing up in San Francisco. He's a good man. I run
into a lot of Lowell people. My middle brother went to Lowell,
my wife and her brother went to Lowell, and all of her cousins
went to Lowell. We were a Lowell-oriented society because at
that time there was no Washington High School, so we really
didn't know any competition. The other schools were pretty much
ethnic, except Commerce, which was a business-oriented school.
Dor f man: What was it like to be a student at Lowell?
Kuhn: Well, you got there in the morning about 8:20 and you went to
class. I remember many's the time in the math classes on
Saturday when I'd work and then walk over on Saturday morning
and slip my assignment in the department door on Masonic Avenue.
I knew this was expected of me and also I was susceptible to a
bribe. My brother said, "I'll give you two and a half if you get
all A's for the semester." I wouldn't let that go by. But that
doesn't mean I loved every course or every teacher — by no means.
By in large, they had an excellent corps of teachers who were
there for a long time and they had a distinguished roster of
graduates. For example, for many years Lowell was the number
one school in the state as far as grade point average of freshmen
was concerned, Lowell and Eagle Rock in Pasadena. And then,
peculiarly enough, when Washington started, it took over from
Lowell that distinction. Washington had a great principal for
about twenty years, Mr. Schmaelzle.
First of all, as you went you got to know fellows and you'd
play basketball with them. You'd have your own teams, you'd play
touch football at the beach, and you'd go to Lowell even if there
were no classes, just to see your friends. Toward the very end
I got a little sloppy. If I was playing basketball and the bell
rang after lunch, I'd keep on playing and I'd cut the next class.
I'd built up such an impregnable reputation that I was never
challenged; they'd think I must be out doing some good work
somewhere.
I liked Lowell. I really did. I have some friends who are
pathological, narcissistic Lowellites; they live for the reunions.
But I never was that way.
Dorfman: Even with such a large student body, was it a very cohesive student
population?
52
Kuhn: Well, there were a lot of orientals, some blacks, a certain
amount of Latin Americans. You just didn't pay attention to
these groups. I don't think there was really overt prejudice
that 1 ever saw. The biggest distinction would be the guys who
were old enough to have a relationship with girls. They would
go on the girls' court and eat there during lunch hour. I
wouldn't have been caught dead in there; I wouldn't have known
what to say to a girl.
Dor f man: You must have been very young when you started at Lowell.
Kuhn: I was just thirteen and five feet even, a little round butterball.
I didn't grow until my junior year and then I grew seven inches
during my junior year. Had there been some way to keep me back a
year, it would have been much better for me. Academically I could
handle it; I could handle even more. A large part of it was due
to the fact that you had good teachers.
Dorfman: Who were the outstanding teachers?
Kuhn: Miss Duffy, of course, in the English department. Another English
teacher was Miss Machett. I fooled around in her class with a
friend of mine, Charlie Reardon. So in punishment she made us
start a student literary publication called Ad Astra (To the Stars) .
It was the first literary publication Lowell had had in twenty-five
years. I remember I was the circulation manager and I took a copy
over to Dean Monroe Deutsch at Berkeley when I asked his advice
about what major I should follow.
McCarty in math was outstanding, Smith and Robertson in physics,
Mr. Barnes in chemistry, Miss Rudoir in French, and Miss Angus in
French.
Dorfman: Why do you say those teachers were outstanding?
Kuhn: Well, the last two because they knew the language, and Miss Angus
had adopted a French boy.
McCarty was so clearly above the cut of the average high school
math teacher. He also supervised the cleanliness of the yard. He
had what was called the MYCA, McCarty 's Yard Cleaning Association.
He would get some tough football player who was cutting up and he
would say, "You pick up papers for half an hour." And no one
would challenge him because he was highly respected, although he
was sixty at the time.
He had a very unusual method of teaching. He had worked up his
own text in advanced algebra and he would dictate this to the
class. He'd say, "Proposition three," and he'd read it to you;
53
Kuhn: "Proposition four," and he'd read it to you. Then he'd say,
"Proposition five, omit," and I was so green I would write down,
"Proposition five, omit." I found out something very unusual
for that time; he would teach advanced algebra by subjects —
equations, permutations of combinations. You'd study and go
through it by rote and go on to some other subject. Then about
three weeks later, when you were on the other subject, the first
one all of a sudden clarified itself in your mind. It was a
tightrope reaching a plateau.
There really must be an area of study in educational psychology
to tell us how this delayed reaction occurs. As a matter of fact,
when I took calculus from him I did it mechanically, just by
following the formulas. It wasn't until I repeated it at Berkeley
that I really understood what I was doing. So when Winston
Churchill said that he repeated the third form five times, I can
see the value of it.
Dorfman: Do you suppose that instructor understood that process?
Kuhn: I have no idea.
Incidentally, one of my classmates in the advanced math class
was a fellow named Harold Chatham, who went from Lowell to Cal
Tech and invented the synthetic emerald, and he's made a fortune.
He has a plant here in San Francisco. He's the only one in the
world; no one else can figure out how he does it. I only wish
I'd done it.
Dorfman: How many other students at Lowell were Jewish?
Kuhn: I suspect about a third of the student body, which was about 3,000
students.
Dorfman: Were you comfortable among the students at Lowell?
Kuhn: Oh, yes. I got more comfortable as I got along because when I
grew in size as a junior, about seven inches in one year, then I
didn't have to worry about height. For example, I was a freshman
with a fellow named Bill Peters, who was about six feet tall as
a freshman, but he never grew during high school. Finally, when
I graduated, I was as big as he was. But all the time along I
figured, "My God, where was I?"
As you grew to have more friends, particularly with that
athletic bond or studies, you felt more at home. Nobody could
have kept you from school, because you went there to see your
friends. You walked together, took the same 21 Streetcar, had
54
Dorfman:
Kuhn:
Dorfman:
Kuhn:
Dorfman:
Kunn:
lunch with them, had gym classes with them. It was a great
place. It's a place where you have — a genuine affection for
Lowell, more than you would have for Cal. Cal you could have
on a philosophical basis, but at Lowell you had it on a personal
basis.
Did that have something to do with Lowell's size?
It was 3,000 people within one square block; the facilities were
horrible. But that was your school. They had great athletic
teams, good coaches, and everybody in San Francisco whom you
knew was "rah rah" for the old red and white.
I was glad to graduate from Lowell and, of course, like every
school they say, "Come back and see us." But like every school,
they don't mean that. It was many, many years before I ever set
foot in the place again. I think I went back to see one of the
coaches about something. But — good school!
You recognized this?
Oh, yes. That was very easy.
i,
Incidentally, I mentioned that Jerry Flamm was a member of my
class. And I recall that when he and I were high seniors, he and
I and another fellow, Jack Kent, who was a swimming star, ran for
class historian. Jerry won because he was very popular. He was
a football player and a track star, and I wasn't known at all.
But we had to write an essay, and I remember picking the essay —
tnis was in the fall of 1933 — on the threat to the world of
Adolpn hitler.
What do you recall about the essay?
Well, he was a great threat to democracy, but I certainly didn't
predict the holocaust. No one else did either. We were having
refugees come from Europe, we were having boycotts of German-made
gooas in downtown stores, and we were looking to Franklin Roosevelt
for leadership — and it never came. I cite the story to show that
it was on our minus at that time.
University of California, Berkeley
Dorfman: You attended bC Berkeley, you left, and then you returned. Could
you tell me, please, what was most valuable about your experience
at Berkeley?
55
Kuan: I would say being in an atmosphere of free intellectual inquiry.
I don't want anybody making any inference from this that I
utilized this atmosphere wisely at the time. But as far as a
permanent effect on me is concerned, just being in the atmosphere
of a great university like that, having the freedom to do it, was
a great thing for me, just a boy from very, very modest circum
stances tossed into this university.
I read this book called There Was Light, edited by Irving Stone,
a response to Let There Be Light, the centennial volume of the
university, which was photographed by Ansel Adams, text by Nancy
Newiiali. Then, several years later, Irving Stone got the idea of
putting together this book of thirty-nine chapters, starting with
Galbraith and ending with himself, of people whose lives have
been affected by Berkeley, almost all of whom were affected by
someone being kind to them, taking an interest in their career;
kindness, of course, being what Stevenson would consider the
greatest virtue of all. I might say that he would be among my
very top, favorite authors — his own life particularly, more than
his writings.
Stone's whole book is these thirty-nine chapters; it's a love
letter to Berkeley and Galbraith more than anybody. He adores
Berkeley, which is why he centered in Berkeley one of his scenes
in this new BBC series on economics, "The Age of Uncertainty."
he considers Cal, as far as intellectual inquiry and the interplay
of faculty and students, the real one live university in the world.
Qualities of a Good Education
Dorfman: What makes for a good education?
Kuhn: What makes for a good education? Great teachers, a great library,
students who really want to have their minds stretched. I have
often thought of doing a book — and I know people have done this —
on what is it that makes a great teacher. You're lucky if in your
lifetime at some level — elementary, high school, or college — you
run into a great teacher who can change your whole life around, as
is pointed out by this book, There Was Light. So you have to have
a great teacher.
I really think that someone ought to research what type of
secondary education Nobel Prize winners got, because it's too
late by the time they went to college. If they were molded, it
must be at least by high school. Whom did Willard Libby find in
56
oahn: Analy high School in Sebastopol that formed him to win the Nobel
Prize? So you have to have the great teachers. You have to have
the facilities.
how, Irving Stone was at Lowell High School, my school, ten
years before I was. When he went to Berkeley, he lived in the
library stacks. He didn't go to class. He didn't have time to
go to class. He was reading anything and everything about the
human condition he could get his hands on. So for him it was
the library facilities.
It never occurred to me at Berkeley to go around and ask people
who were the great professors in any discipline — history. Who's
a great history [teacher]? Who's a great political scientist?
Whom should I auait for one lecture or take a whole series , not
for credit, because it's not in my curriculum, but just because
I want to stretch my mind? I didn't do it. Why? Because I was
lazy and dumb, and that's what happens with us.
But the opportunity was there, so here's the other thing: It's
not just the teacher. Well, it does come with the great teachers.
If I had haa a great teacher, someone to take me under his wing
and say, "This guy has got some potential" — maybe I didn't have
any potential that was readily apparent. I know very well the
university wasn't structured to find it.
It never occurred to me in that student body of 14,000 that I
would get any kiiid of personal treatment. I would think, "That's
out.1' how can they possibly deal with — have one dinner with your
so-callec faculty adviser and twenty other freshmen, and you never
see the guy again. We took it. If you were there in the 1960s
and didn't like it, you could have raised hell about it. But you
have to fight for it.
57
II ORGANIZATIONS, GROLPS, AND THE SAN FRANCISCO JEWISH
COMMUNITY
Mother's Affiliations
Dorfman:
Kuhn :
Dorfman;
Kuhn:
You mentioned some of the organizations to which your mother
belonged, such as the Sisterhood of Temple Emanu-El, Hadassah,
and the Council of Jewish Women.
She also joined, when I entered Berkeley, an organization of
Jewish women whose children attended Cal and whose purpose, as
I understand it, was to provide support for other Jewish children
who needed it. I think it was called the California Alliance of
Jewish Women.
What kinds of organizations were these?
the membership?
What was the make-up of
I have no idea. I mean, obviously the Sisterhood of Temple
Einanu-El were members of the congregation. This California
Alliance of Jewish Women — my aunt lived in Oakland, but I think
probably through her my mother met these people. My mother would
do what was really expected of her. During World War I she
joined the National League for Women's Service, out of which came
the Women's City Club, and she did whatever was needed. I knew
she belonged to Hadassah, but I have no idea what the program was.
Now I assume it's the same program they always had. How deeply —
she would never run for office or anything like that. If you
wanted something from my mother — ask her to bake a cake.
As far as the Council of Jewish Women — that was about the same
idea. It was an effort on the part of Jewish women in America to
make Jewish life and all life in America better, a very noble
aspiration when you think of it. I have no recollection of having
discussed the program with my mother. I would just see the
literature, announcements, and programs around the house.
58
Dorfman: Who were the leaders?
Js.uhn: I have no iaea, no idea.
Dorfman: You mentioned Mrs. Sloss.
Kuhn: Right. Mrs. Sloss was one of the founders nationally of the
National Council of Jewish Women. Bernice Scharlach is
interested in writing a book about Mrs. Sloss. The leaders of
Hadassah included Mrs. Reuben Rinder, Mrs. Henry Harris, and
Mrs. Morris Heppner. My mother knew all these women, how well
I just don't know. It might have been a nodding acquaintance.
Dorfman: You didn't know them?
Kuhn: I was too young.
Dorfman: Do you recall other organizations, Jewish organizations, at that
time?
Kuhn: Jewish, no. Those were the only ones my mother belonged to as
far as I know.
Dorfman: And that you remember?
Kuhn: That 1 remember, right.
Dorfman: Do you feel that these were effective organizations?
Kuhn: Oh, yes, absolutely, absolutely.
Dorfman: Do you know who donated money to these organizations?
Kunn: I'm assuming that most of this was through annual membership dues
or fund-raising affairs. The Sisterhood Guild, for example, at
Emanu-El, then as now, devotes a great deal of its efforts and
money to support a religious school, and I think that's certainly
very worthwhile. A woman's actual involvement in that aspect is
almost always going to parallel the years in which her children
are studying there. And my mother had three sons who went to
Sunday school.
Dorfman: Which organizations were supported by Eastern European Jews
exclusively?
Kuhn: Oh, I have no idea. I have no idea. My father belonged to San
Francisco Lodge Number 21, B'nai B'rith. Originally this was
Ophir Lodge in the Mother Lode, founded in 1855. I remember
going to one meeting when they owned a building down on Eddy
Street. I would have no idea where these people were from.
59
Kuhn: I was just a little kid, you know. It never occurred to me, the
whole idea of this German-Eastern European thing. Intellectually
I knew about it from the history of the Jews in the United States,
but I never really related — and I know about it specifically with
Temple Emanu-El. But iny own family's role in it never even
occurred to me before we conceived this interview, because I
really think that this is not very important. You're a Jew, and
for Jews to have fought on the basis of their origins, over which
they have no control, at a time in Jewish life when solidarity
was always needed, was a waste of effort.
effectiveness of Pre-1940 Jewish Organizations
Dorfman: Prior to 1940, from your experience, how effective do you think
these organizations were in serving the needs of the Jewish
community in general?
Kuhn: These organizations only attempted to do a certain bit. The
Sisterhood Guild was designed to help Temple Emanu-El. The
Council of Jewish Women was an attempt to improve conditions in
America. Hadassah was primarily conceived for health and child
care in Palestine. Then you had the Federation of Jewish
Charities, which was part of the Community Chest and met certain
local needs. You had the Jewish National Welfare Fund, which
represented national and overseas needs. So none of these
organizations by itself could attempt to accomplish the whole
job. Each one, just as now, defined a role for itself and it
got in trouble if it started lapping over into somebody else.
Now, when you say there really were two organizations, because
we had to have one for the Germans and one for the Poles, this
was the way it was, and eventually, of course, it worked out.
One of them fell by the wayside, or they merged, because those
distinctions no longer remain. Instead of having Germans and
Poles, you have Ashkenazim and Sephardim. There's always
somebody on the outside, you see.
Dorfman: But do you feel that Jewish organizations generally are effective?
Kuhn: I think Jewish organizations have been extremely effective. I
really do. You're not going to be able to document this in the
lives, in the sayings of people who were helped directly, because
people don't like to admit they were helped. But if someone wants
to make me believe that my parents and the people they came to
60
Kuhn:
Dorfman:
Dor f man:
Kuhn:
Dorfman:
Kuhn:
Dorfman:
Kuhn:
Dorfman:
Kuhn:
America with did it all by themselves, that there was nobody
sitting in some port in Europe or in New York or in San
Francisco, that there was nobody there with a welcome basket,
I won't believe that. I don't know how my grandmother could
get here with two of her six children, as a widow at age
twenty-eight, by herself. I don't believe that.
That's an interesting situation to examine. Let's stop here
and turn this tape.
[end tape 2, side B; begin tape 3, side A]
Do
you recall friction between any Jewish organizations?
At that time?
Yes, prior to 1940, from your childhood to 1940.
Well, I certainly became aware in the latter part of that decade,
'35 to '40, of the fact that Temple Emanu-El had a rabbi that
was anti-Zionist and he was the only one around who was. He
effectively prevented the other point of view from ever being
presented at Temple Emanu-El, with two notable exceptions. I
don't know if you want to cover the youth group at Temple
Emanu-El. Would you like me to speak about that?
Yes, I would like you to, a little later.
Well, then I'll speak about that later on, but I'll talk about
this one aspect.
This was Rabbi —
Irving Reichert, about whom I intend to speak considerably.
Toward the end of the '30s Emanu-El had an evening program.
The sanctuary was packed and the speakers were Joseph D. Schwartz
of the Joint Distribution Committee and Abba Hillel Silver, the
great Reform rabbi from Cleveland who shared with Rabbi Stephen
Wise of New York the moral leadership of the Zionist movement in
America. Whoever sponsored the meeting got the use of the
sanctuary. Rabbi Reichert welcomed everyone and then said,
"This is a house of worship. We will have no applause." Of
course, this is completely contrary to Jewish tradition, but at
that point there wasn't anything you could do about it. Had he
had his way, the meeting never would have occurred there.
About a year before, the Men's Club invited Rabbi Saul White
to present the Zionist viewpoint and after the meeting everybody
was asking questions of Rabbi White, not around Rabbi Reichert.
61
Kuhn: For the first time, we had heard somebody tell us that there
was another side. This was when I first realized that there is
this difference, although I won't say I foresaw any great
conflict coming which did come later on during the '40s.
Other than that, the Jewish community worked together very,
very well — from my standpoint. But I knew also that they were
very active in the Community Chest. Frank Sloss said several
years ago at the fiftieth anniversary of the old Community Chest
(it would have been 1972) that he remembered his parents working
hard at this , and that it was an important thing in his mind and
a very worthwhile thing and a lot of fun. He still thinks it's
worthwhile and important, but whether it's still fun he's not so
sure, because life has gotten so complicated.
Dorfman: But you do not recall friction between Jewish organizations?
Kuhn: No, I don't recall it. But I'll say this. Even for a kid,
though, because as a part of this youth thing there was a little
competition between Emanu-El and Sherith Israel — between their
basketball teams, between their youth groups, but this was a
natural thing. If you didn't have the competition, you wouldn't
have the basketball game.
Dorfman: Would you call that a friendly competition?
Kuhn: Oh, yes.
Dorfman: How effective do you think Temple Emanu-El is in serving the
religious and Jewish cultural needs of its membership?
Kuhn: Well, do you want that in a paragraph or a book? Because I carry
on a love-hate relationship with Temple Emanu-El and I have most
of my life. It's my place. I was born to it. Every time I
criticize it, it comes back to the fact that my criticism would
be very simply evaporated if I would put more effort into my
congregational membership myself, if I would take on a greater
leadership role.
But I've had a number of serious or quasi-serious occurrences
in my experiences with Emanu-El. So that a number of years ago
I decided that I was goint to serve where I felt I could do the
best job and get the most satisfaction, namely working with the
children, that somehow my background and that of the average
adult member were nonmiscible. It just didn't mix together. I
really don't think that Temple Emanu-El does a very good job, but
I'm going to explain that by saying I don't believe any congrega
tion does a very good job.
62
Dorfinan: Do you mean the religious and the cultural needs?
Kuhn: That's right. Now, the religious needs — of course, the both of
them are subject to definition. There's a communal religious
need which is like worship services. I think there's just a
defect in the reform service, whether it was the old prayer
book or this one, by not having enough participation. I like
to sing. There are not many opportunities for that. I go to a
Friday night service. If it's crowded in the chapel you have
to sit out almost in the corridor. If you say, "Why don't we
sit in the Temple on Friday night?" — "Well, because there aren't
enough to fill the Temple." So I say, "Let's get some tough
ushers and make us all sit in front together." I'm too much of
a voice in the wilderness to make a big hassle out of it anymore.
On the other hand, as far as individual religious needs — you
have a problem in your family, a death or a sickness — the rabbis
are very responsive as far as their pastoral calls are concerned.
I have absolutely nothing but admiration on that score.
On cultural needs, well, if you like art displays or musical
concerts, that's fine. They have this Emanu-El Institute of
Adult Studies, which Rabbi Fine started, which I think is
excellent, excellent. So from a cultural standpoint I think
they do better than religiously, but also that it's easier to
do better than religiously. I've often said that if I could
find a better temple I'd quit Emanu-El and join it, but it
hasn't happened yet.
Dorfman: Which organizations do you feel best serve the Jewish community
today?
Kuhn: In San Francisco?
Dorfman: In San Francisco.
Kuhn: Well, I want to disqualify myself from stating the Jewish Welfare
Federation because I'm employed by them. But I was a volunteer
for them for forty years, so I think that I wouldn't remain in
that capacity of increasing responsibility if I hadn't felt that
all along. But that's not a service organization because the
Federation does largely funding and social planning. The Home
for the Aged, certainly, the Jewish Family Service, the Hebrew
Free Loan, which exemplify the highest tradition of Jewish
charity. You've got me in a very difficult position because I
may consider a need as very important, but if I eliminate the
organization it's going to imply that I don't think the need is
being met as well as possible, and that's certainly true. That's
why I'm going to stop here.
63
Dorfman: What can you tell me about the American Jewish Committee? I
understand that you were vice-chairman in 1971.
Kuhn: Well, the American Jewish Committee originally was an elitist
organization. It started out as one of the first organizations
to try to combat anti-Semitism in Russia. It had tremendous
muscle in the halls of Congress and much of its work was done
at the national level out of New York. Then later on they tried
to broaden the base.
I'd been approached for membership several times. I finally
joined because I had respect for the person who asked me. And
then I was asked to go on their board of directors by an invita
tion, which in one way was an insult. They said, "All that we
want is your name. You won't ever have to do any work." And I
really shouldn't have accepted on that basis because if I can't
work, I don't want to be connected in a leadership role. Then I
found out that to me, anyway, the local organization didn't mean
much. It was mostly a way of generating financial and other
support for the national and international activities.
But then I was asked to be one of the three vice-chairmen and
I didn't ever want to become chairman because I was running out
of organizational steam at that time. So I got the other two
vice-chairmen together just to let them know that if they were
ever asked to be chairman, there was one guy who would never
stand in their way. I'd be cheering them on. Both of them,
incidentally, Edith Coliver and Paul Vapnek, did become the
chapter chairmen.
Then shortly thereafter I dropped off the board. I'm still
an AJC member and you might say that some of my best friends
belong to it, but I think their real strength is in their
national programs.
Dorfman: And the United Jewish Appeal?
Kuhn: The United Jewish Appeal is the major beneficiary of the Federation
drives throughout the country. I really only became involved with
them directly when I became campaign co-chairman of the Federation
in 1962 and '63, because it was then that I went overseas on
missions that they had organized. When I came back they asked me
if, time permitting, in addition to my speaking engagements in
our own community, I could go elsewhere throughout the Pacific
states where people had not had the chance to go overseas and
bring the message back.
64
Kuhn: So I became very much involved with them and eventually ended
up as vice-chairman of the western states region of UJA. I went
to their regional conferences and became a real "UJAnik," which I
am to this day, balanced by the fact that when you become a "UJAnik"
you become all overseas-oriented. You see the tremendous sweep of
history when you see Jews wiped out of Poland, the whole Jewish
population disadvantaged whatever country it is. You tend to get
the attitude, well, their problems are so much greater than any
we have that we ought to be able to handle our own problems by
ourselves and still solve theirs. Later on you realize that it's
not that simple, that you have to have strength locally and inter
nationally. Otherwise the whole thing is going to fall apart.
But the average donor doesn't get involved directly with UJA.
He gives to UJA through his federation, but he's really not
involved in it. He would have to be in a special capacity to be
involved in it.
Dorfman: So that the weakness in the UJA is —
Kuhn: That's not the weakness. The weakness in UJA is, I think, a little
softness as far as the administration is concerned. But that
wouldn't be a disabling weakness, because if there's a crisis in
the world you could send out a telegram tonight and there 'd be
5,000 people in New York tomorrow morning if UJA called upon them.
That's the organization that saves lives in a very difficult way
because they have to meet the standards of America and yet deal
with Israel, which is a different country over which they have no
say. I think there's going to be a little tightening up of the
internal administration of UJA. I don't see any other particular
problems they have.
Dorfman: And your involvement with B'nai B'rith?
Kuhn: Well, over the years friends of mine who belong to B'nai B'rith
said, "Kuhn, we're going to get you into B'nai B'rith. You're the
kind of guy we want. You're a worker." I said, "To hell with
you!" But finally I got put in a position where the president of
the District Grand Lodge //4, Dr. Abraham Bernstein, was involved
in a business transaction in which I needed his good x^ill. He
called me one day and said, "I happen to notice that you're not a
member." I said, "Until five minutes ago I wasn't." So I joined,
but I didn't go to my first meeting for about a year. When I
finally arrived, Judge Leland Lazarus, who was the president of
my lodge, announced, "I just lost my bet. A year ago when I saw
that Marshall Kuhn joined our lodge, I bet he would never come to
a meeting, and here tonight he's shown up and embarrassed me."
65
Kuhn: It's not an attending thing. I chose to join the same lodge
my father and brother HAK had belonged to, San Francisco Lodge 21,
which is now San Francisco-California Lodge 21. That means that
it was the twenty-first B'nai B'rith lodge in the whole United
States. B'nai B'rith was founded in 1843 and our lodge dates
back to 1855.
That I belong to the same lodge as my father means a great deal
to me. But the only thing in B'nai B'rith in which I really got
involved was as chairman of its District Grand Lodge Committee on
Hillel. That means for about nine states I really worked very
hard on that — selection of personnel on various campuses for
Hillel, working with federations to get funding, changing the
Hillel leadership at SF State from a councilorship to a founda
tion.
That's really my only involvement and then when I went to work
for the Jewish Center and became a professional, I had to give
that up. But apart from Hillel, I've never done really anything
for B'nai B'rith.
Dorfman: What do you think the strengths and weaknesses of B'nai B'rith
are?
Kuhn: The strengths are that for a number of men this is a primary
Jewish involvement. It's quasi-religious. B'nai B'rith has a
seder. That's a religious thing. It's the fellows getting
together and you can knock it all you want. If you say they only
go because they have bowling — but it's thirty or forty Jewish men
bowling, knowing each other. So that can be a strength or a
weakness.
The weakness stems not just from B'nai B'rith. It stems from
the fact — and I've noted this as I went around for years as a
volunteer for the Irwin Memorial Blood Bank. It's from the change in
American life. In the early days my father-in-law was honored to
be asked to be a Mason, or rather he asked them if he could join
the Masons; you ask them. All fraternal orders are having a tough
time. B'nai B'rith in a sense is a fraternal order. They're also
having a tough time. Veterans groups have a tough time. You go
down to the Veterans Memorial Building and you walk around these
halls and they're the kind of halls — the physical set-up is the
same as if it were a Masonic lodge, very highly ritualized type of
meeting, very high level age in membership. A young guy can't
crack that.
In some places it's the same as if it's a service club like
Lions or Kiwanis. Half a century ago when all these groups had
their greatest strengths, there were far fewer distractions than
66
Kuhn: today. Cars and radios were few and there was no TV, so the
lodge or service club meeting provided your excitement. I
vowed during the war that I would never join any organization
that had a secret ritual. I was in the Navy and that had certain
secrets. I said, "I'm just not going to do this," in spite of
the fact that my father-in-law wanted me to join him in the
Masons . He wanted his son and his three nephews . None of the
five of us would do it. Yet, given twenty years back into time,
we all would have done it. From his standpoint it was acceptance
for the foreign born; he was going to be a Mason. It was a good
business connection. He would get potential customers for his
clothing store. I didn't feel that I needed either of those.
Now, maybe if I had my back to the wall and it was the
depression — I don't want to make myself out as any big liberal
about the thing because I look to see the Masons maintain a home
for their down-and-out brethren. Since my childhood they've
sponsored a football game, the Shriners Hospital for Crippled
Children — they do a tremendous amount of good and B'nai B'rith
does a tremendous amount of good. They have service projects
all over the place.
The weakness is in trying to get enough men to take part in
these. You can't knock the leadership entirely, because they're
doing more than I am. I'm knocking myself as the followership
by just saying, "I'm not going where my money is." I'm just —
there's a limit and I've reached the limit, so that in some cases
B'nai B'rith, for example, has formed a young people's lodge where
the age automatically is lower so a young guy can get ahead.
B'nai B'rith in some cases now permits a man's lodge and a woman's
chapter to function as one unit.
I've seen service organizations where a past president was a
member of the board of directors ex officio for life. You get
enough past presidents on the board, and they're close enough to
each other socially and agewise, and they go out together with
each other on Saturday night, and you've got the dead hand of the
past. This is what really kills them.
But in B'nai B'rith they have more or less come to the conclu
sion that the success of any lodge is not going to be based
primarily upon attendance at regular meetings. We're going to
have to split up some of these service functions, and we can get
somebody to help us raise the money for Hillel, and for visiting
veterans in the hospital, and for raising blood. And then we've
met some of our needs, but without imposing upon a guy to, say,
come on Tuesday night to a meeting. It's just another night out,
and the average guy frankly doesn't want another night out. He
wants another night in.
67
Kuhn: That's my analysis and I think I'm pretty right on the beam on
that because there are so many organizations which are in the same
boat.
So some of them have changed. They have their meetings during
the day or they have a breakfast meeting of a Rotary Club type and
try some kind of a gimmick because many men just will say, "I'll
give you my money, but you're not going to get my time." They don't
have it.
Dorfman: Do you feel that there were any strong or burning political issues
within these three organizations, the ones we've just talked about,
the American Jewish Committee, the United Jewish Appeal, and B'nai
B'rith?
Kuhn: Well, the American Jewish Committee was one of the mainline
community relations organizations, along with the American Jewish
Congress and the Anti-Defamation League and the Jewish Labor
Committee. They always have things to do because they have to
keep their eye on not just Congress and the legislatures of fifty
states, but all the major cities or wherever else any kind of
legislation is proposed that's going to have any type of effect
upon anybody's rights, plus the whole overseas structure. So
they're always battling these things out. I wouldn't want to
pick out one thing, but certainly anything dealing with Israel
is uppermost, and that's the American Jewish Committee.
The United Jewish Appeal is the same way except they have the
second complication, which is whatever they do in the way of fund
raising has to meet the requirements of the Internal Revenue
Service.
The third one, which is B'nai B'rith, concerns about the same
things as the American Jewish Committee except that the Anti-
Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, which is their human relations
arm, is almost a separate organization from the rest of B'nai
B'rith. It receives a great deal of funding separately from
federations. It gets money from B'nai B'rith and this comes
back, of course, to the fact that there have been many efforts
over the years to merge some of these community relations agencies
to save money and personnel and to avoid duplication of services.
It hasn't happened because the one thing that hasn't merged is
different viewpoints.
For example, the American Jewish Congress is much more militant,
whereas the American Jewish Committee might try conciliation in a
matter. Say they have a boycott, the American Jewish Congress
would just as soon go to court. So seemingly there are places for
each of them, but I wouldn't want to recommend new organizations
68
Kuhn: or new publications. That's way overdone. But basically if an
organization has hung on and can develop the support, it's going
to do pretty well. It's going to have to, however, continue to
justify its existence as a separate organization by proving that
it has a different approach from somebody else already in the
field.
Dorfman: But there are no major internal problems?
Kuhn: [Pauses] Well, there are always major internal problems. There
is professional staff in every organization that's jockeying for
position. There are volunteers jockeying for leadership and you
have to be very skillful about the care and feeding of volunteers.
Some organizations have several volunteer structures. They have
the national advisory council, the national executive council,
the national administrative council, and each one is responsible
for a different level of things.
In B'nai B'rith, for example, the supreme lodge is broken up
into these district grand lodges. As a matter of fact, the
district grand lodge of the B'nai B'rith is meeting this week in
Palo Alto for the western states, District Grand Lodge #4. They'll
have forty or fifty resolutions they're going to deal with that
they're going to pass on to the national.
Now, whether these are real issues or whether they're just
hyped up by somebody is again subject to interpretation. You can
be a very good B'nai B'rith member and let that completely wash
over you. There are a lot of organizations in Jewish life that
exist primarily for schmoose. Some guys really love it. I'm not
mocking it, because at certain times that's what you're going to
really need. You get into a situation, for example, where the
American Nazi party becomes active in a certain city. The first
thing in countering this threat is to call a meeting where all
elements of the Jewish community, representing the whole spectrum
of viewpoints, can come together to exchange facts and agree on a
unified course of action. This interplay would be impossible if
there were only one organization.
On the other hand, there are certain programs which develop
future leadership. One of these is Thirteen Thursdays in which
the Women's Division of Federation annually trains about twenty-
five young housewives. Once they're trained, the question arises:
Where are we going to put them all? We have to farm them out to
the satellite organizations, auxiliaries, etc. — tell the gals
that, "You've been trained for leadership, but raise your kids
first and when they're out of school then come on back."
69
Changes in the San Francisco Jewish Community
Dorfman: From your vantage point, how has the San Francisco Jewish
community changed over the years?
Kuhn: It's changed in many ways. Firstly, it's gotten older in the
sense that the ones who have left in the last fifteen years have
been primarily the younger families. During this time the Jewish
population of San Francisco County has dropped from 55,000 to
35,000. Now, within the Federation area, where we've got between
75,000 and 80,000 Jews in Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo, and
Northern Santa Clara Counties, those in Marin and on the Peninsula
would be considerably younger in age, many of their numbers having
come directly from the East, from the suburbs in the East,
bypassing San Francisco, the core city, completely. So we've
gotten older. In San Francisco we've gotten smaller. But again
with the caveat that the Federation area itself hasn't changed
totally.
We've gotten more Jewish in the sense that the incoming people
from the East who went to college out here or went to college back
there but wanted to get away from their family, whatever, and then
they married — they came out and they started life here. And many
of them had deeper Jewish roots than those who were born here.
You take a look at the Young Adults Division of the Federation,
almost all of whom came from somewhere else. So we've had a great
influx of young blood. Of course, you have an influx of retired
people as well. So there's been a tremendous change in who these
people are.
When I say they're more Jewish, even Temple Emanu-El, which is
considered a bastion of — I tease them when I call Temple Emanu-El
"The Big E," just like the Emporium. I say, "The Emporium of
Organized Judaism." But even here at Temple Emanu-El, which is
supposed to respond the slowest of anybody, when they finally
decided to participate in these summer trips for confirmands to
Israel, we've sent a higher percentage of our kids than any other
congregation in the United States. And this area sends a higher
percentage than any other area in the United States. We have 120
kids in Israel right now, forty-seven of whom were members of the
Emanu-El confirmation class of '72. Twenty years ago no one would
have predicted the success this program has enjoyed.
Dorfman: I'd like to review not only tensions between Eastern European Jews
and German Jews when you were growing up , but also between those
groups and Sephardic Jews.
70
Kuhn: When I vas a kid it was a completely foreign subject, even though
at one time when I was in high school and college I lived at
3rd Avenue and California Street, and at 4th Avenue between Clement
and Geary was this Mogen David Sephardim. I never paid any
attention to it.
[end tape 3, side A; begin tape 3, side B]
The Unaffiliated
Kuhn: I was as ignorant of Sephardim as the world was of the Jews of
North Africa until after World War II.
Dorfman: How about tension between these groups, between and among the
groups, after 1945?
Kuhn: After '45 there virtually were no Sephardic groups. These people
hadn't really come over in any large numbers yet. When they did
they were processed by the Jewish Family Service. Most of the
Sephardim went to this Mogen David Sephardim Synagogue. Not all
of them. By that time the Eastern European-German thing was all
over. The last time you identified any Jews as German would be
the ones who came over during the Hitler era. We had this Jewish
Council of 1933 and that was just more or less for easy identifica
tion. The great marking point is between the affiliated and the
unaff iliated, not between where you came from. Two- thirds of us
are unaff iliated. Yes, when I say that we're doing a pretty good
job, at other times it seems pretty bad, pretty bad.
Dorfman: Were there tensions between the affiliated and the nonaffiliated?
Kuhn: No, because the nonaffiliated don't really care, which is too bad.
There are some tensions between the affiliated and the affiliated
as to "our congregation is better than yours," and, "we're afraid
that someone might resign from our congregation and join yours
because you have a younger or an older rabbi, you have bus service
for Sunday school, or whatever," and this leads to the reduction of
standards. For example, you never want to get a parent that mad at
you; they might decide to quit and join somewhere else. Therefore
you give way to the most impossible demands. It's bad. It's bad.
71
Religious Education
Dorfman: What might those demands be?
Kuhn: "Well, my kid could only come two Sundays out of four to religious
school because he's out on the bay yachting. We, his parents, are
divorced and my husband takes him two Sundays a month." So you
say, "Okay." I had a child in my Sunday school class at Emanu-El
one time whom I never saw because he was always out in the bay. I
finally told the rabbi, "You put this boy in another section of
the class, but get him out of mine. I will not have a child on my
roster whom I consider not to be enrolled in this school. I don't
care what the reason is." So they did that and finally they threw
him out of the class completely. [Tape interruption]
I also don't want to point the black finger only at Temple
Emanu-El, because this happens in other schools as well. It's a
generally bad situation where you have such a low rate of affilia
tion. I'm sure that this is a problem in most major Jewish cities
in this country.
Dorfman: When you were growing up, how did the wealthy Jews treat the poor
Jews?
Kuhn: Well, when you ask how they treated the poor Jews, if it was a
welfare case they treated them through the welfare agencies. You
mean —
Dorfman: Attitudes —
Kuhn: By attitudes do you mean walking around Temple Emanu-El? Well, in
the first place, there were a lot of wealthy members of Temple
Emanu-El who did not send all or even any of their children to the
religious school for whatever reason — desire to assimilate, etc.
The parents belonged to Temple Emanu-El, so they weren't trying to
escape anything. Maybe they felt that "it can happen here." In
some cases there were friends of mine with whom I went to Sunday
school and they had brothers and sisters whom I didn't even know
existed until twenty or thirty years later because they never went
to Sunday school. "I couldn't figure out how come your sister
never went to Sunday school." "Well, my parents just felt that
they didn't want her to go."
I had one child in Sunday school to whom I gave an examination
as I did every other member of the class. We had some questions
about Hitler and anti-Semitism, and the parents directed this child
not to answer these questions. They didn't want her to know that
anything like this had ever happened. The religious school
committee, to its credit, actually censored these parents.
72
Kuhn: When you say about wealth, the general level at Temple Emanu-El,
because of the standards of the time, was all children dressed
rather well. You wore a tie to Sunday school. You might wear
your bar mitzvah suit beyond bar mitzvah or at least a nice sweater.
So you would never guess financial status from that. It wasn't like
today where they all dress like tramps wearing denims. So you
couldn't really tell on that basis. The Temple has always been so
large that nobody really knows everybody else anyway. I might know
who the president of the Temple was when I saw him up on the bimah.
He wouldn't know who I was necessarily unless I were active in the
congregation or the men's club or something else like that.
I think that it was based mostly on social and family relation
ships. You were close to someone because of those. Those are the
people you'd go to Temple with and you'd want to sit with. Remember
this, that the Temple was financed by selling seats. Your subscrip
tion bought you lifetime privileges. You had to pay dues beyond
that, but those dues were less than if you joined the Temple without
owning seats. Then as things progressed and deaths occurred, it
was considered the proper thing to do, to deed the seats back to
the congregation. So it's a fairly small minority of people who
still own their seats. Of course, if you owned your seats the best
ones were up in front and cost the most.
So that would be one way of differentiating, but now the situation
has changed. You have two High Holy Days services now. I have no
idea what the method of assigning seats is. I look around and most
of the wealthier people I know don't sit up in the front. Maybe
they don't want to be conspicuous. I think that has been for the
better.
Dorfman: Did you see any evidence as you were growing up of social exclusion
on the basis of wealth?
Kuhn: Well, yes. It really wasn't all that bad because, for example, a
girl in the confirmation class would have a party at her house. It
was always insisted by the religious school committee that everybody
in the class was invited, no matter who they were.
Dorfman: I see. So this was anticipated then?
Kuhn: This was anticipated and frowned upon and it wasn't as bad as I
would have thought it would be. I think mostly it would be a
matter of what schools you went to, what high schools you went to,
or whether you went to public versus private school. You just knew,
you know. But, on the other hand, I went to Lowell. The only kids
I really knew in my confirmation class were kids with whom I'd gone
to grammar school or Lowell together. If you went to Galileo or
some other school — I really wouldn't know these kids unless they
happened to be on the Temple's Sunday school basketball team.
73
Kuhn: It was a commonality of interests tied with other things. The
poor kid who came from some offbeat high school where he might be
the only Jewish kid was going to Sunday school to be confirmed
and didn't know anybody. He was really out in left field. There
was less exclusion. But there was noninclusion. I don't know if
that's a distinction that's useful.
Dorfman: How about today?
Kuhn: Today, pretty much the same. At Emanu-El, the level of affluence
is still pretty high, with exceptions. Emanu-El has its members
of the Sephardic community who have not done as well and haven't
been here that long. But its members are very well accepted, very
cheery kids, attractive kids. I think that that stuff is gone, or
rather the circumstances are the same in the sense that if you come
from the school where you're the only Jewish kid, you're not going
to be too well accepted at Emanu-El. You're not going to be too
happy there. But that would be true if it were in Sunday school or
anything else.
I don't think there are any conscious efforts to exclude anybody.
I think, on the contrary, that their need for participation is such
that they would want everybody to participate. It's whether your
mother has a station wagon and is willing to drive the class around.
[Chuckles] That's one of the factors.
It requires a tremendous skill in group dynamics to make these
things work, the desire to have them work and the patience that
says, "We're really not sure what the value of all this is. We
think it's good, but we're not going to know for ten years from
now. Yes, we're going to do it anyway." A lot of it is crossing
fingers. I think that by and large you can make it work, if you
don't have standards that are so close to what's applied in public
schools. Otherwise you're trying to measure people by the fact
that they're religious or more or less Jewish because they got 85
on a test against 75, and that's got absolutely nothing to do with
it, nothing.
I think you made that point last time, except that you didn't go
into it at length.
Our whole religious education system needs a tremendous shot. If I
had my way, I would abolish all conferences, national and interna
tional, and take all the plane fares and put them into teacher
training .
Dorfman: That's where you think it is?
Dorfman:
Kuhn:
Kuhn: That's where it is — teacher recruitment, training, motivation,
praise, a kind word from the rabbi: "You're doing a fine job in
the sixth grade. Mrs. So-and-So called me last week and said her
daughter loves it." A teacher laps that stuff up. How often do
you think they get it? Not often, in any school. Why? Because
you have to be attuned to thinking it, and the head of the school,
whoever it may be — rabbi, principal — has to have that as a
priority. Generally his personality is not such as to think of
these things and he better write himself reminders in his date
book, "Praise So-and-So this week. Whom have you praised lately?"
I really mean it. I really mean it. What other reason does a
person have to teach than a kind word? Because on the general
level, the teacher is not getting that much support from parents.
Dorfman: To come back to your economic situation as a child, you expressed
a recognition earlier that there were economic changes in your
family after your father's death. How did you consider yourself
as you grew and developed?
Kuhn: Well, even before my father's death I knew that at certain points
I'd be wearing my brother's clothes or shoes or something. I got
over thinking that was a bad thing.
Dorfman: Did you consider yourself middle-class?
Kuhn: Oh, yes, yes.
Dorfman: As opposed to rich or poor?
Kuhn: Well, I knew I wasn't rich. I didn't think I was poor, because
there was nothing I was consciously deprived of. If I wanted to
go to camp, I went to camp. It was my decision. I didn't want to
go because my brothers ceased to go. This was after two years.
No, I considered myself middle-class without all the upper-upper
and lower-middle and all that sociology jazz, because I lived in a
middle-class neighborhood. It's as simple as that. That's what the
Richmond district was and is.
Dorfman: As you were growing up, how would you say that new immigrants or
"greenhorns" were treated by Jews who were already established?
Kuhn: The only ones I would be familiar with belonged to the Council of
'33 and because they were Germans there was a great attempt made by
Temple Emanu-El to make them feel welcome. Irving Reichert was a
leader in this in calling attention, really on a broad scale, to
the fact of what was going on in Germany and making attempts , often
successful, to bring persecuted rabbis over from Germany. He did a
great job on that.
75
Kuhn: So at Temple Emanu-El there would be these special events for
them. Then during the year, after confirmation, I sort of appointed
myself as assistant to the janitorial corps. I would go around
there after school helping them set up tables and chairs and all
that business, so I would see all these events. I was very much
impressed with what they were trying to do — make these people feel
wanted. It wasn't economic. They all seemed to be middle-class or
better. This was earlier in the Hitler years, so they could bring
things over with them. It was a matter of making them feel a part
of the community, that this was a secure community and it wasn't
going to happen here. This ''Council of '33 still exists and there
are other groups parallel to it — for example, the Far Eastern
Society of Jews coming out of Shanghai.
There was always this great desire among Jews to maintain their
roots, long before Alex Haley. Now, what other attempts were made
by other congregations, I just don't know, but the Jewish Family
Service certainly was alerted so that when these people came through
they were helped with their immigration things. They all had to be
sponsored as far as that was concerned and we took our quota as now.
I think it was done in a very, very fine way.
Dorfman: Were they socially accepted by already established Jews?
Kuhn: Well, yes, because there were always groups; the moment the first
ones came over and got settled, there would be the base for the
next ones. Sometimes you would go to a party and it would be
almost all German- speaking. Even up to a few years ago, maybe
still, we'd get together with people, a large percentage of whom
were from German backgrounds, just happened to be there; we just
happened to be there and were friends with them. It wasn't because
of their German background. I don't speak a word of it. But they
seemed to be more comfortable in that environment and because this
is a free country, thank God, this is where they have their social
life.
Dorfman: To come back to anti-Semitism, did you have any experience with it
as a child?
Kuhn: Only an occasional taunt. I couldn't even give you a numerical
thing, or who might have taunted somebody else. I don't even
remember anybody else being called "kike." There was, I would just
say, a little of it, and by the so-called "tough kid." You would
pay no more attention to that than if someone called another kid a
"wop." There's very little of it.
Dorfman: And as an adult?
* Jewish Council of 1933
76
Kuhn: Very little. I encountered some in the Navy, much less than I
would have thought. But, on the other hand, I've always been
one that looked at it both ways. There was a friend of mine in
the Navy from Temple Emanu-El and he was thrown out of the
midshipmen corps and everybody who knew him figured, "That's no
surprise; he wasn't worth a damn." But his explanation was anti-
Semitism, and we said, "That's baloney." So you're always going
to pick the explanation that suits you.
I had a class at Emanu-El one time and I asked this question,
just as you asked me about anti-Semitism. None of the kids had
ever had it until I came to one girl whose whole family had been
wiped out in Holland and, of course, this was a shock. Her
experience couldn't even be understood by the other children. She
said, "I lost my parents, brother, and sister."
So you say anti-Semitism. There was nothing virulent about it
and I don't even know if it was any more harmful than ant i- Jewish
jokes. I'm sure there was more there, you know, but I was never
in any position where I was scared or thought that this was any
kind of a threat .
Dorfman: What about experience with Jewish anti-Semitism?
Kuhn: Well, I knew that some kids would have preferred not being Jewish.
I've had students like that. I think that's about the extent of
it. You have some people who don't belong to congregations because
for whatever reason they want to disaffiliate or change their names,
whatever it might be. It made you always wonder, because whenever
you had a war in Israel, the Welfare Federation would pick up two
or three or four thousand gifts from donors who hadn't given for
ten or fifteen years because something — that old mystic tie got to
them. If you could explain it, you could maybe patent it, bottle
it, but it's there.
I always felt that if you didn't want to be Jewish, go ahead and
quit. You're not doing us any good and maybe you're not doing the
world any good. Quit if you can, but quit at your own peril,
because no one's pushing you to quit. The Gentile community isn't.
I think that there's been a great acceptance of Jewish values.
I've seen that in my interfaith work. A tremendous number of
Christians, Catholics, and Protestants really believe the way Jews
believe, increasingly so. So they're not pulling anybody.
But there are a lot of people with all sorts of neuroses for
which they think that any action is better than none, and because
they have ignorance about what Judaism stands for, or they'd maybe
rather try Zen or some other Eastern religion — but I don't see the
77
Kuhn: incentive. Boy, if you can't be Jewish in San Francisco, you
can't be Jewish anywhere as far as freedom from anti-Semitism
is concerned.
Unfortunately, there is a special kind of Jewish anti-Semitism
where the reform doesn't like the conservative or orthodox, and
vice versa. This sense of superiority, this arrogance based on
ignorance and fear, is very divisive. The sects within Judaism
must learn to accept each other and to realize that their most
urgent common problem is the high percentage of unaf filiation.
Dorfman: As you look back upon your life in San Francisco, do you feel
that Jews have tried to assimilate too much or perhaps too little?
Kuhn: [Pauses] Well, that's a hard thing for — a value judgment for one
to make about somebody else. I think that any assimilation is too
much, so they have tried too much. Anything is too much. That
would be my considered answer. Any kind of assimilation is too
much.
Dorfman: Would you like to react to Suzanne Gordon's article on San
Francisco Jews?
\
Kuhn: I spent a couple of hours with Suzanne here in this same room
giving her some of my reflections on Jewish life. I just felt
that the article that resulted, which she had originally intended
for New West, but which came out in Moment , was nowhere near as
good as I think her ability would call for. I think some of her
positions are too simplistic. I think taking certain families,
such as the Fleishhackers, who represent only one really extreme
position, and making them sort of central figures was poor
choosing. It's not an article on American Judaism that I would
recommend anybody take seriously.
Quality of Jewish Life
Dorfman: If someone asked you about the nature and the quality of Jewish
life in San Francisco today, what would you tell them?
Kuhn: I'm going to tell you a story. I was in Philadelphia for the
General Assembly of the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare
Funds last November. Rabbi Robert B. Gordus, who is one of the
leading lights of the conservative movement, was the key speaker
at our banquet. I had never heard him before, though I have read
his material. He talked about the glories of Jewish life in this
78
Kuhn: multi-culture nation, this bicentennial July 4th that was not only
our 200th anniversary, but Entebbe, and the way the Jewish people
have flourished economically in this free capitalist society, and
how we have hundreds of Jewish scholars at universities.
And then he stopped and said, "So how come if everything is so
good, why is everything so bad? Why is it bad? Because we've got
assimilation coming out of our ears, because our kids are inter
marrying, because no one takes these studies seriously" — the whole
litany, and it's a mishmosh, and you're always fighting. It's like
saying, "I'm fighting to not die of pneumonia, but why are these
cooties in my hair?" No matter what it is, there's always some
thing and that's the nature — there's that old song, "That's Life,
That's Life."
You'll get someone from the East who will say, "Why can't I get
a good water bagel out here?" Well, to them that's Judaism; that's
gustatory Judaism at its apogee or nadir or whatever you want to
call it. I don't want to say that everybody is his own best judge.
I don't know. A girl who comes out here in search of a Jewish
husband — it's a great place if she finds one. It's a lousy place
if she doesn't, see? You pays your money, you takes your choice.
I've never lived anyplace else for any sustained period except
New York and I certainly wouldn't want to live in New York. I
don't think that's a fair thing to ask of a place: "What's the
matter with you?" I think that so many of the things that we find
wrong about anything in our society are so correctable within
ourselves. If I don't like anything in politics, I can always
join the local Democratic club. I can't do everything, but I can
do more than I've been doing unless I want to say, "I'm going to
toss it all over the side and I'm going to sit on the sidelines
forever."
We tend to blame this indefinable "they" or "them" for so many
things when there's either no one to blame or that's just the
nature of things. Most Jews who come from somewhere else think
there is something the matter with us here. So then what I want
to know is how come they're coming from someplace else? [Chuckles]
Why don't they go back to where it was better? But they don't have
much of an excuse for that. What they want is for San Francisco to
be better in every respect than from where they come.
That's not possible, because I'm betting that they didn't come
out here just for a better Jewish life except in very few cases.
I've known cases like that — a family in San Mateo, specifically.
In the middle of building up his practice in the Midwest, this
young physician made a conscious choice. They came out and I
79
Kuhn: remember showing them Peninsula Temple Beth El on a Saturday
afternoon and he said, "Well, we want our kids to grow up in a
Jewish environment. San Mateo's got it and this little town
where we lived in Ohio doesn't. I'm going to just give up my
practice and start all over again. But if I don't do it now,
I'll never do it." And he did it.
He was Dr. Myron Frylech and he passed away last year and I
thought there was a real courageous guy. But that's a family
taking a real strong position, but not out of keeping with what
they felt. They felt that the reason that they got married was
to give a good life for the children they would have. Luckily
he was in a profession, with sufficient professional skill that
he could do this. If he were tied into a family business which
would have gone completely down the tubes, that's something else.
But I think that's rare.
There are so many reasons people come out. A lot of them are
economic. So many people work for big firms. We had at Beth El
about sixty new members every year and about sixty resignations.
Most of these were people that worked for General Electric, Lock
heed, or Philco, and every year you'd look around, and where'd
they go? They got transferred.
Dorfman: Isn't that a common problem?
Kuhn: It's a tremendous problem. When you figure that 23 percent of
Americans move every year, I would have a kid in the school who
had been in six grammar schools by the time he hit the eighth
grade. I had one child whose father was in the armed forces
and it was worse there.
This tremendous transient status of Jewish — of American — life,
not just American Jewish life — it makes it tougher for the Jews or
for any religious group. With this complete dislocation where the
woman has no idea what she's doing, all she's ever doing is packing
and unpacking. The kids have no idea where they are, any thing's
relationship to anything else, or whether it's even worthwhile to
find out where they are until they move again. The only thing
that's going to save them is when they grow up and go to college,
because then they'll be in one place for four years even though
their family may be moving.
Dorfman: Perhaps.
Kuhn: Perhaps. It's just a tremendous thing, this transience. Even if
they're not moving from one community to another, they're upgrading
their status by moving from one tract to another — east of the
Bayshore, west of the Bayshore; Burlingame to Hillsborough.
80
Dorfman: Would you comment generally, in view of all this, on the strength
of the Jewish community here in San Francisco?
Kuhn: The strength of the Jewish community in San Francisco is the same
basically as the strength anywhere — that I think we've finally
learned: one, we'd better get along with each other because we're
going to need each other, and when we need each other, there ain't
nobody going to help except another Jew. Jimmy Carter's going to
help the same way as Ford and Nixon and Eisenhower and Kennedy, up
to the limits of American interest, which are very much — .
[end tape 3, side B]
Uniting the Jewish Community
[Interview 3: July 28, 1977]
[begin tape 4, side A]
Dorfman:
Kuhn:
If you could bring the Jewish community closer together, how would
you do it?
That's such a Utopian goal. I've never really looked at it that
way. I think if you could make each congregation closer together,
then there 'd be less space between them and you could work on the
unaff iliated. I can't see in this day of whatever media we have
of anybody, no matter how good, being able to be accepted as pure
with no self- aggrandizing motives. This is true in general as well
as in Jewish society.
There are just so many problems and it isn't the lack of ability;
it's the lack of, as I said, guts and character and these are char
acteristics which can be appreciated only over a long period of
time. I don't see any great leaders on the scene. I'm not blaming
anyone because he's not a leader, but you don't become a leader just
by having a leadership conference. You don't develop educators by
just having an educators' conference.
Well, let me explain this. The Hebrew Union College- Jewish
Institute of Religion had a three-year curriculum in developing
cantors. At the end of that time you were supposed to be qualified
both as a cantor and as an educator. But they sent out to Penin
sula Temple Beth El in 1955 a man who was a fine cantor, but he was
not an educator. The congregation had accepted him but later
pointed out the discrepancy. They said, "All right, henceforth, to
be an educator you have to stay an extra year: a cantor, three
years; and a cantor-educator, four years."
81
Kuhn: But where it doesn't work is that one year does not an educator
make. The requirements of a cantor are primarily artistic, of an
educator they are primarily administrative, and they rarely exist
in the same person, regardless of any time requirements. It's
like saying that it would be very nice if a rabbi were qualified
to sweep out the shul because then maybe a temple could afford
only one rabbi and one janitor, but it isn't done that way.
The crisis of leadership — if you had the leaders you wouldn't
have to worry about how it was done or what the goals were and
you'd have the confidence that it was going to be done. But I
don't see it on any level, certainly not locally here by any rabbi
or any lay leader; none is accepted fully without question. Now,
maybe that's too hard to say, without qualification. There are
certain lay leaders who are felt to have no ulterior motives. A
rabbi always likes people to agree with his point of view and
particularly that of the division within Judaism which he represents.
I don't know. I'll have to give some thought to this, how you
achieve this state of nirvana or the Hebrew equivalent. It's going
to start with education, certainly, continual lifelong education,
whether anybody comes or not.
Dorfman: We can come back to this a little later. What do you think is most
unique about San Francisco's Jewry?
Kuhn: Well, that's going to be, obviously, compared to what? Do you mean
compared to the rest of the Bay Area? Or I assume you probably mean
the rest of the United States, or at least the eastern part.
Dorfman: Yes, compared to the eastern part of the United States.
Kuhn: First of all, orthodoxy has a very shallow base of support here.
Reform got here early, as Sherith Israel and Emanu-El, which in
thirty years of their arriving here changed from German orthodox
to American reform congregations. We've got about an equal spread
between reform and conservative, a great majority of unaf filiated,
a fairly good degree of Jewish organization, a great acceptance of
Jews in every form of civic life and politics, artistic, musical.
And it isn't just any one of these; it's a combination of them.
The acceptance by the non-Jewish public is not only right but good.
Jews are leaders in philanthropy, general and Jewish.
I think that just like the whole rest of San Francisco, the
Jewish community in many ways hangs loose. They didn't put up any
big fight about Willie Brown's bill for consenting adults to have
sex acts legalized. We're not having any big Jewish battle about
gays .
82
Kuhn: Our concern, of course, is the same as most of American Jewry,
which is Israel and all that this implies. If that were solved
(not that it's going to be solved) what we'd do to take its place,
I don't know, but there will be something. I think maybe it's the
fact that you can be Jewish here less consciously than elsewhere.
There are not many people who see that there is anything wrong with
this, although I personally consider it undesirable.
Dorfman: Undesirable?
Kuhn: To have so many people unaffiliated, not to support the synagogue,
to be uninvolved and not to involve their children. But there are
conflicting things in this. As I said, we have a higher percentage
of our confirmands go to Israel each summer following confirmation
than any other place in the United States. Things start here later.
It happens ten or twenty years later, yet we finally have three day
schools that we're supporting. Twenty years ago they would have
laughed at you if you had said we would even ever support one
because our commitment to public education was so deep. So it
comes later here and deeper here when it finally comes . We go to
conferences the same as anybody else. Maybe the mail is slower.
Dorfman: I asked you last time about conflict and competition, and you spoke
about the competition between and among Bay Area synagogues today.
How would you say this has changed over the years?
Kuhn: There was an effort maybe fifteen or twenty years ago to have the
San Francisco synagogues form an organization of synagogues, as
contrasted to the organization of rabbis. Now there is such a
synagogal organization in the East Bay and the proposed one here
had one or two meetings and agreed not to go further. They couldn't
find any purpose and this, of course, I think is a result of rather
shallow leadership.
There are purposes, even if it's just joint efforts to reduce
the number of unaffiliated. There are certain changes on the
congregational map. You'll find Beth Israel, which at one time
was the largest conservative congregation, selling its property at
1839 Geary because the neighborhood had become all black. They
merged with the reform congregation at Temple Judea to form a
combination reform-conservative synagogue, which is almost unheard
of in the United States. That changed the map quite a bit.
You have Sherith Israel at one time becoming very, very low in
membership, giving Emanu-El perhaps a three or four to one lead in
membership. Now it's adjusted itself somewhat, but there's always
the argument as to whether or not there's room for one more reform
congregation. The big question is, who and what kind?
83
Kuhn: Perhaps the largest growing synagogue would be Mogen David
Sephardim on 4th Avenue, which consists of North African, Sephardic,
Egyptian, and Moroccan Jews. But the congregational figures are
hard to come by because when they want to brag about it, they give
you a big figure. When it comes time for them to pay their dues
to the national organization, they try to show how few they have.
[Chuckles]
Dorfiaan: So the figures are flexible?
Kuhn: A little skewed.
III EMPLOYMENT EXPERIENCES, 1938-1972
Financier Herbert Fleishhacker 's Office Boy
Dorfman: A little earlier you said that you interrupted your college career
to work as an office boy for Herbert Fleishhacker.
Kuhn: Right. At the old Anglo-California National Bank.
Dorfman: What kind of man was Herbert Fleishhacker?
Kuhn: Well, he was a gambler. I was his office boy for a year and I
would say that he gave priority to things in life on the following
scale. He was tremendously interested in public service. There
was priority if you were to come into the bank to see him because
you wanted to give some deer or other animals to the San Francisco
Zoo; he was chairman of the Park Commission. He was also chairman
of the Finance and Fine Arts Commissions of the Golden Gate Inter
national Exposition of 1939-40. Those were his two primary interests
in public life. The third visitor he'd see would be someone who had
some kind of a private deal for him. He was said to have been a
director of eighty-four corporations simultaneously, certainly a
financier second only to A. P. Giannini. People came to see Herbert
Fleishhacker, but Herbert Fleishhacker went to see Giannini.
[Chuckles] Fleishhacker was quite a bit behind Giannini.
The fourth priority was someone who just came in on plain old
bank business. He was looking for a big loan, and if it was good
enough to get a loan, Herbert wanted a part of it. A very
interesting man. He lived for many years at the Hotel St. Francis.
During the summer he had a place on the Peninsula. He would arrive
in his chauffeur-driven car every morning. He would take from the
chaff eur his thermos of hot coffee. One time I found that the
glass liner had cracked. So maybe in a sense I saved his life by
not pouring that day.
85
Kuhn: A very dynamic man, full of energy, not Jewish in any kind of
a formal sense. I assume he belonged to Temple Emanu-El. I never
saw him there and in this sense he was quite different from his
brother Mortimer, who was chairman of the board of the bank,
whereas Herbert was president.
During this period he was named as a defendant in a lawsuit
brought by some members of the Lazard family regarding a trans
action which dated back to about 1913. He was trustee of some
land in Kern County for the Lazard family and they charged that
he had not fulfilled his fiduciary responsibilities and they sued
him. He engaged as his attorney John Francis Neylan, who was also
Hearst's attorney. Neylan held the theory that he could easily
defeat this suit on its merits rather than claim the statute of
limitations. After the first go around, Fleishhacker lost in
superior court and Neylan issued a statement, "As Zola was to
Dreyfus, I will be to Herbert Fleishhacker," and then he sent him
his bill for $175,000. That ended their Dreyfus-Zola relationship.
[Chuckles]
I had the task of moving the entire transcript of the trial from
Neylan's office, which was in the old Crocker Building at 620 Market
Street, now the Aetna Building, across the street to the Palace
Hotel, where Mr. Morton of L.A. came up. He was the attorney who
was going to undertake the appeal, which they also lost. The
amazing thing about Mr. Neylan's law firm was that in spite of its
very conservative make-up, it included Bartley Crura, who later
wrote Behind the Silken Curtain, which actually was ghostwritten
for him. He became the editor of the New York Star or PM. I forget
which it was. It was a liberal afternoon paper, p'erhaps it was PM.
When Fleishhacker lost that judgment, other people from his past
came forward and began suing him on other grounds. It was bad for
the image of the bank, so he left the presidency. His brother left
the board chairmanship. His son, Herbert, Jr.; nephew, Mortimer,
Jr.; and his nephew by marriage, Leon Sloss, all left their vice-
presidencies .
The bank had to go out and get new leadership, leadership of a
very visible nature, because the unions were also hammering at the
door. So they asked Robert Gordon Sproul, president of the Univer
sity of California, if he would become the bank president. The
students marched around the president's house in Berkeley: "Bobby,
don't leave us. We need you now. Don't go for banking. We know
they don't pay you here as much as you'll get over there, but we
love you." And he didn't go.
Dorfman: What year was that?
86
Kuhn: That was about '38. They brought in a man, William H. Thomson,
from Southern California who was a banker and he did an incredible
job. He brought in others with him and the bank pulled out. It
cleaned up its portfolio of questionable loans and eventually sold
out after the war to Crocker Bank. Anglo-California no longer
exists.
Incidentally, that job was gotten for me by Rabbi Reichert.
When I told him I was dropping out of school for a while, he spent
a considerable amount of time trying to get me employed. He
referred me to Hugo Newhouse, a Golden Gate Bridge director and
president of the Emanu-El men's club, and to Harold Zellerbach,
and, thirdly, to the Fleishhackers. But this was still in the
depression. It was tough, particularly as to the union aspects;
to try to get these waived for a college boy was pretty tough.
Dorfman: How did you relate with Herbert Fleishhacker?
Kuhn: I don't think he even knew I existed. There was always going to
be someone out there to do his bidding, but he gave me a perspective
of the way that big men of this type operate. They don't operate
monolithically at all. For example, he had a male secretary and
he would just tell the secretary what he wanted written. The
secretary would then dictate this to his female secretary. So the
number one secretary had to have a parallel brain. He used to
come over to our office about every day in the greatest state of
frustration of any man I had ever seen. His name was Harry Thompson.
He just died here a few years ago.
Dorfman: This was the executive, then, delegating power?
Kuhn: Herbert Fleishhacker, after he left the bank — he didn't just fold
his wings. They had to dispose of their wealth in certain ways in
accordance with the court decree, but he went back into business,
Yosemite Chemical Company, until he died. He still lived in the
penthouse of the Hotel St. Francis and loved contract bridge. He
was indomitable. Time did a profile on him and they called him
"the bulbous nosed Herbert Fleishhacker." He didn't like that very
much.
California Blue Shield
Dorfman: [Chuckles] I suppose not. At a later date, you chose to work for
Blue Shield. How did you make that decision?
87
Kuhn: Well, I had come out of the Navy and had a few temporary affilia
tions. One was selling Esquire boot polish and that didn't work
out. I had taken a course under the G.I. Bill of Rights on public
speaking, possibly the smartest thing I ever did other than marrying
my wife. I realized for the first time I could speak. Before that,
although I had been active in organizational work like the young
men's group at Temple Emanu-El, that wasn't the same as speaking to
people whom you didn't know, and I liked it and was good at it.
As a matter of fact, the company that put on the course,
Beckmann Kollister, wanted me to work for them. Frank Beckmann
gave me an introduction to a fellow named Frank Weisman who was a
sales manager for Blue Shield, then known as California Physicians'
Service. I had heard of them briefly. They had only been organized
since 1939. I remember even then thinking in '39 that when they did
organize — thinking how nice it would have been if the bank had had
a plan like that, a health plan. I just went in to see them because
I needed a job and he hired me, right on the spot. They were short
of men. If it had been some other organization, I probably would
have gone to work for it.
This is what happened with a lot of fellows. They just at some
point began discounting what kind of places were acceptable employ
ment and they found out that the next meal on the table was probably
as good a criterion as any.
But I stayed there. I don't think when I went there I had any
idea I would ever stay that long. But I found it satisfying until
a certain point. Then when the nature of the leadership changed in
the mid- '60s because of the introduction of Medicare and Medicaid,
I felt that it was time to leave.
Dorfman: Yes. Why did you leave Blue Shield?
Kuhn: I became ashamed of them. The basic part of any health plan is the
ability to pay claims on a timely basis in accordance with your
contract. If you can't do that, you have no reason being in business,
and we had lost all our reserves through inept management. We no
longer even met all the requirements of being called a Blue Shield
Flan. It was a political thing that kept us going.
They had a political thing that if the plan had gone under —
because of technical requirements it no longer maintained the
reserves it should have, reserves defined as being perhaps six
months' dues be paid in advance, a standard created by the National
Association of Insurance Commissioners, not legally binding but
accepted by Blue Shield. If California had gone down (California
is the largest plan in the nation) , the conclusion would have been
88
Kuhn: that the doctors don't know how to run a health plan. That would
have jeopardized the whole Blue Shield movement, so therefore they
couldn't go down. But when I had friends call me and berate me
every day as to why my organization couldn't pay claims — there's
no answer to that because the company was very growth-minded. How
can you grow if the business you already have can't be served?
The point was we brought this new management in to replace other
management. There was a company fight, and this happened (the dis
missal of previous management) at the same time as the inauguration
of Medicare and Medicaid in the middle of 1966. So here we were
going up from an employee total of something like 750 employees to
3,000 — like overnight. Now, you couldn't get supervisory people to
train new employees, much less find them. So every department was
strained. They had to show performance on the government programs,
which soon became much bigger than nongovernmental programs. Prior
to that time, although we'd had some governmental programs, they
hadn't amounted to much.
I was in the nongovernmental side, group and nongroup plans, and
our staff was literally raided. Just like an expansion team in
baseball, they'd come up and say, "You've got to give us three
skilled people." I'd say, "We need them." "Tough." Then they
would say, "And also we expect a greater production of new groups
out of you." You can't do it because they say you have to have
the horses, and I thought this was never going to change.
They even had a policy, believe it or not, in their desire to
hire people who were skilled keypunch operators — they would pay one
of our employees a bonus if he could convince a friend of his doing
that job somewhere else to quit his employer and to come to work
for us. This is just on the fringe of business ethics. But that
was the only way they could get them.
So I figured, "Well, you've thought about a lot of things in
your lifetime and certain things you've skipped. Maybe now is the
time to do it because you won't have the chance again." One of my
close friends in the company came around and congratulated me — one,
on doing it; and two, having the guts to do it; and three, with the
tinge of regret that I wasn't taking him along with me.
Dorfman: But it took courage.
Kuhn: It took courage, yes. My wife was with me all the way. She wasn't
happy at the nature of my change, but she was happy that I was.
She thought I would be happier.
Dorfman: That's understandable. Then from there you went on to —
89
The Irwin Memorial Blood Bank
Kuhn: On to the Irwin Memorial Blood Bank. I'd been a blood donor since
1941 and I'd been active with Irwin ever since I came back from the
service and went to work for Blue Shield. I was chairman of our
employees' blood donor club and then I began to branch out to
organize donor clubs in other organizations and speaking as sort
of, really, a one-man's speakers' bureau. I became very active in
the state and also nationally in the American Association of Blood
Banks. I think I can say I'm one of the experts in blood donor
recruitment, which is a very complicated thing. And about this
time I thought, "What would it be like to work for this, doing it
full time?" Bernice Hemphill was the executive director of the
blood bank here. We had talked it over and she decided to hire me
in mid-July, 1970, which was — I'm not going to say a date that will
live in infamy, but like everything else, most instructive.
The blood bank movement, by and large, is the cutting edge of
women's liberation because blood technology, the ability to do
blood transfusions, depends upon certain scientific discoveries,
the latest of which wasn't made until 1940 with the discovery of
the Rh factor. Now, this was pretty close to the time that America
was mobilizing for war. When the war came, the men who were in
pathology and hematology went into the services. They left the
labs and the blood banks, the newly organized blood banks, pretty
much in control of the women who have never given up that control.
I don't say they should, but this particular blood bank made an
art out of emasculating its male employees. I felt that they would
never try it with me because I had really meant quite a bit to them
as a volunteer and as a volunteer I was their pampered darling.
But the moment I was on the payroll, it was a different story. A
different story.
A Significant Accomplishment
Kuhn: So I wasn't there too long before I decided that this was not going
to really last. I did accomplish one thing. I say accomplished it
because there was no other factor to account for it, and that was
that we went down to absolutely zero as far as paying donors is
concerned. Up to that time they had said, "Oh, this is a volunteer
blood bank. All blood is given by volunteers, except for a few who
were paid for being rare types, blah, blah, blah." And those they
had come in the back door or by the side entrance. But while I was
there we went down to zero — the first time any major community blood
bank in the United States could make that statement.
89a
IRWIN MEMORIAL BLOOD BANK OF THE SAN FRANCISCO MEDICAL SOCIETY
IttS]
ime DC
AUGUST 1970
RSHALL KUHN JOINS DONOR RECRUITMENT STAFF
'shall Kuhn, former volunteer coordinator of donor
js, recently affiliated with the blood bank as manager
onor recruitment. Mr. Kuhn, who is familiar to many
or club chairmen through his years of volunteer
vice to the blood bank and his associations in busi-
6, civic and charitable organizations, comes to the
>d bank from California Blue Shield, where his most
ent position was manager, Market Research and
elopment.
he blood bank, Mr. Kuhn joins Mrs. Robert (Jean
trell) Coach, Mrs. Edward (Wilma) Cummings and
s Carol Burt in planning mobiles and other donor
ruitment activities in the community. They work in
junction with other staff members who phone and
l ruit donors to fill the various blood needs of hos-
.'ils in Irwin's eight county service area.
No. 3
With 63 donations to Irwin,
Mr. Kuhn was especially
proud when his daughter
Alyson gave her first don
ation at age 18. A student,
Alyson has been working
in the blood bank labora
tory this summer.
A NEWSLETTER FOR DONOR CLUBS OF THE BLOOD BANK • 270 MASONIC AVENUE, SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA 94118 TELEPHONE 415/567-6400
90
Kuhn: Now, other blood banks could say, "We don't pay for blood,"
but they couldn't also say, "We meet all needs." What they did
was if a hospital couldn't get the blood out of a blood bank, it
had to buy it from a commercial source.
So the main way this was done was to organize as many oppor
tunities as I could to speak, to large groups of employees of
various firms, employees who had never had a blood donor group
before, had never heard anybody talk about it. They had heard
about blood banking and about being a blood donor, but they
hadn't done it. I was able, in some cases, to get a fantastically
high percentage of employees to do this, and this was the difference.
A lot of this material would be of interest now, I think, in view
of the suit recently filed by the State of California against the
Irwin Memorial Blood Bank and other defendants because it's all
pertinent to this whole question.
So I decided to leave and I told them I was leaving, but I
didn't leave for about seven or eight months after that, not until
it got to the point where I figured, well, I had no specific place
to go and hadn't really spent much time looking around. I don't
know whether I was waiting for the good fairy to touch me with a
wand or not, but I left there without having any real place to go.
I left there on March 31, 1972.
Dor f man: I think we'll stop here,
[end tape A, side A]
A SAMPLING OF MARSHALL KUHN'S LIFETIME INTERESTS AND ACTIVITIES
Anglo California National Bank of
San Francisco Basketball Team -
Season of 1939 - San Francisco
Recreation Department - Industrial
Division Men's Basketball Tournament
Class AA
Back row, left to right: William Prin-
diville, Carl Trappmann , Marshall
Kuhn, Fred Newman, Coach Milton
Stansky
Front TOW, left to Tight: James Collins,
Jack Donovan, Eugene Shupack,
Charles Kennedy, Richard Garaventa
hissing from picture: Fred Estebes,
Walter Herringer, Manager Bill Burns
Israel Prime Minister Ben
Gurion greeting Marshall H
Kuhn, co-chairman of 1963
Jewish Welfare Federation
Campaign, during a United
Jewish Appeal overseas
study mission.
c n_
Reserve fund luncheon, Irwin Memorial
Blood Bank, San Francisco Medical Society,
1962. Left to right: Doctor Leonard,
chairman, Blood Bank Commission, San
Francisco Medical Society; Mrs. Bernice
M. Hemphill, managing director, Irwin
Memorial Blood Bank; Marshall H. Kuhn
Kuhn Track Club. Eugene, Oregon
1976 US Olympic Men's and Women's
Track and Field Trials. Left to
right: Flora and Gay Maclise; Walt
Miller; Andy Winokur; Marshall
Kuhn ("The founder"); Mort Macks;
Hugh Winokur; Charles Auerbach;
Jim Abrahamson; Peter Berg.
Marshall H. Kuhn, left, Ryozo Azuma
right; after receiving an honorary
life membership in the Sierra Club
John Muir National Historic site,
Martinez, California, 1975
91
IV FURTHER REFLECTIONS
[Interview 10: March 8, 1978. This interview was recorded
during an editing session with Marshall H. Kuhn at his home
at 30 7th Avenue, San Francisco.]
[tape 17, side A]
Dorfman: Please explain the basis for the suit against the Irwin Memorial
Blood Bank and other defendants by the State of California.
Kuhn: In blood banking through the American Association of Blood Banks,
the local blood bank makes two charges which are rendered on the
patient's hlspital bill. For each unit of blood transfused there
is a replacement fee and a processing fee. The processing fee is
roughly equivalent to the blood bank's actual cost of doing business,
Now, I'm not relating any of this to the charge the hospital
itself might make for cross-matching or administering the blood.
I'm just stating that the hospital is the fiscal agent for collect
ing the fee which will come back to the blood bank. First you have
the processing fee, and up to very recently at Irwin that was
$12.50 per unit, a unit being one pint of blood. Then there's the
blood replacement fee, the theory being that if the blood is not
replaced by a co-worker or a friend or a relative of the donee, the
blood bank will take that fee and go out and hire a paid donor to
replace it. And at that time the replacement fee was about $25.
All the time this system was going on, the blood bank was
saying, "We really don't want paid donors. We want volunteers
because, one, that is more the American way, the Judeo-Christian
ethic; and two, a volunteer donor is much less likely to have had
hepatitis and not reveal it."
Now, eventually Irwin reached the state where they didn't need
any paid donors. All blood was given by volunteers. And yet, if
you were a patient and the blood that you used was not specifically
92
Kuhn: replaced on your behalf or replaced by means of a credit,
established in advance, you still paid a replacement fee for
each unit. This was, in a sense, pure profit to the blood bank.
They were charging you for something that cost them nothing.
Now, what did they do with the money? Well, in the case of
Irwin, at least with some of the money, they used it to build a
new blood bank when they moved from Laguna and Washington Streets
to 70 Masonic Avenue. At that time they decided not to have a
public drive, even though one would have been justified, because
it is a public institution. It could easily have succeeded since
it saved so many people's lives. They got new laboratory equip
ment from the William G. Irwin Foundation. But the public wasn't
told this, except for one very, very small article. Actually, it
was one paragraph that appeared in the newspaper when the building
was complete, as if it were almost a legal notice.
So, the question is: If they had collected more money in
replacement fees, even beyond paying for the new building, and
this money accumulated and is presumably invested, what were they
going to do with this money and for what purpose? Does any
individual or group benefit thereby? I don't think there are any
charges that anybody is. It's probably invested and it is probably
fully revealed in the annual report that the blood banks, along
with every other nonprofit institution, must render to the Register
of Charitable Trusts in California. But at what point is it going
to end? I think the saddest aspect is the fact that they never
took the public into their confidence. They just kept on charging
and charging.
One of the most unusual aspects is that the insurance companies
have gone along for years paying these donor replacement fees as
part of hospital expenses. Now, it's true that some of the insur
ance companies will not reimburse the blood bank until it has been
shown that the donor had not been successful in recruiting a
replacement donor. But, nonetheless, the State of California
argues that you have a two-price system for the same thing. Here
your blood bank is giving away blood that someone has replaced on
paper in one instance and charging a replacement fee for the same
thing in another instance.
There are all sorts of ramifications to this, including the fact
that the American Red Cross blood system, which is about the same
size as the American Association of Blood Banks, operates on the
principle that anyone's entitled to blood just by virtue of needing
it, that there is no artificial need for blood, and that the public
ought to be good enough citizens to donate it, without a complicated
system of credits.
93
Kuhn: The truth of the matter is that most blood donors are altruistic
in nature and they give the blood willingly. But they want to hold
back a little, in the sense that if they should ever need it, they'd
like a little break as compared to the person who needs it and has
never made the effort to give it. And that's the great majority of
the public. So you've got a very sticky situation, financially,
ethically, and the worst thing is that it has been hidden so long,
is if there were something to be ashamed of. It's a natural situa
tion which has to be dealt with.
First of all, the blood banks themselves were in a bind.
Someone would come in Congress and would say, "We want to inspire
people to give blood. We'll give them a tax deduction for each
pint they donate." But who was going to assign the value to that
blood? If it is saving my life, it may be worth a million dollars
a pint. The blood bank didn't like congressmen saying that blood
was worth such and such, but the blood bank itself had to put a
value on it when they had this replacement fee program. It's a
very sticky thing.
As a matter of fact, at the annual meeting of the American
Association of Blood Banks held in San Francisco last year, the
joint agreement, started in 1960 between the American Association
of Blood Banks and the American National Red Cross for reciprocity
on a nationwide basis, was considered. It would allow me to give
at any blood bank I wanted, whether Red Cross or AABB. That unit
of blood could be transferred to any hospital in the country in
1976, without any fanfare whatsoever. After the AABB had adjourned
here, however, it was announced that this agreement had been
abrogated. Now, that's just one example.
There's another example of what I would call very sloppy
administration, and as a citizen I always felt bad about it.
When I went to work for the blood bank, the new building was
still being completed, and one day someone called up and said,
"If you don't evacuate the building, you're going to have a bomb!"
This was at a time when there were bomb scares all over San
Francisco every day. You wonder who would threaten to bomb a
blood bank, but there are kooks , as you know. So we evacuated
the building.
Then we went back and I wondered, where was the orderly procedure
for the evacuation? I had never seen any written instructions. So
I inquired of a number of the blood bank's original staff who had
been there many , many years and none of them had ever seen a written
plan. In other words, we just got out of the building, we came
back, and that was it. So I raised this question with the director
of the blood bank and asked whether she would want me to make up a
Kuhn: plan. The answer eventually came down, "No." At that time, as
of when I left in March, 1972, there was no plan. I would venture
to guess that there has never been a plan.
I worry about it from several aspects. First is the plan for
how the blood bank operates if it has a disaster within itself.
A boiler blows up; the power fails. We have any number of things
including contamination or sabotage. How do you handle it within
yourself? Secondly, supposing the catastrophe occurs in the
community? San Francisco has an earthquake or a fire. What does
the blood bank do in response to that? How do they get personnel
there? How does it deliver the blood? No instructions.
Now, if you say there are instructions, they're in the safe of
the director, that's the same as no instructions. Instruction is
only as good as people know it to be. That is, it's properly
posted, the employees and the public are used to it, and they
practice it. The third aspect is that the Irwin Blood Bank, along
with every other blood bank in the AABB system, undergoes periodic
accreditation.
I cannot conceive that one of the questions in that accreditation
process would not relate to whether or not you have adequate plans
for meeting emergencies properly posted, gone over with civil
defense officials, the fire department, and the police department.
If they don't have that question, it's a black mark against the
AABB. If they do have that question, and accredit Irwin on a
continuing basis in the light of a negative response or of not
asking the question, then it shows a little collusion between the
organization and the association.
The public has the right to expect of a blood bank like this,
that brags of its being the best in the United States, that it
certainly would know how to take care of itself in an emergency.
For, after all, blood itself is always used in the event of an
emergency.
I'm thinking of a situation such as at Mt. Zion Hospital, where
the average person, if asked, "What happens if the power fails in
the hospital?" — and the answer comes back, "The auxiliary generator
goes on." Then when you ask, "But what percentage of the hospital
needs are taken care of by the generator?" the answer is such that
it will discourage you very much, because it is rarely adequate at
all.
95
On Authors
[begin tape 4, side B]
Dor f man: There are two stories you say which will —
Kuhn: Yes. Last week you asked me who was my favorite Jewish author,
and I answered Charles Angoff . During the week I had occasion to
go over my record of reading, and over the past twenty-five years
I've read about a hundred Jewish books, plus a lot of non-Jewish
books. The only author of whom I've read as many as five books
is Harry Kemelman, who did Friday, the Rabbi Slept Late, and
Saturday, Sunday, etc. Other than that, three stories by Sholem
Aleichem; a number of authors of two books; Angoff, just two.
But he's still my favorite because I know what he has written
that's waiting for me.
Dorfman: That's anticipation.
Kuhn: It's not like among non-Jewish books, in which I would say maybe
I've read twenty or fifty books by or about John Muir. I've read
much more widely in the Jewish field based upon numbers of authors.
But for whatever reason — maybe it's because I'm involved in Sunday
school work so much that a book comes over my desk and the librarian
has ordered a book that is so good that I borrow it for two or
three weeks or months. [Chuckles] Meanwhile she's shrieking,
"Where's that book?" That's one thing.
An Awareness of Economic and Social Differences
Kuhn: The second thing is that you asked me did I or children similarly
situated socially and economically — were we aware of this difference
between us and the more affluent? And, I think, yes, in various
ways. There was a boy my own age. He went to Lowell with me. He
lived about two blocks away and we would walk every morning. This
was when Lowell was a four-year high school. Pretty soon his
parents began inviting me to be their guest for dinner on Sunday
night with their family, which consisted of themselves and this
only child and the grandmother. And this went on every Sunday
night for months. I would be with them Sunday afternoon and only
once did they invite my mother.
It took me a while to figure out that they were literally buying
someone as a companion for their son, someone who was acceptable,
who played games well, whether it was cribbage or something like
96
Kuhn: that, and shortly thereafter I broke it off. I figured, although
my mother never complained — maybe she saw it as a great opportunity
for me. This man was prominent in business. I felt that this was
not fair. I had two older brothers, but they weren't any companion
ship for my mother. At least I could be with her on Sunday night.
That's just the way — one way, I guess, of reflecting on the situa
tion.
Dorfman: That was an astute recognition on your part.
Kuhn: Yes. It takes a while for some of these things to come clear in
your mind, how you're being used. Of course, you don't like to
think you're being used, and even if other people are being used
in similar circumstances, not you.
Dorfman: No, there's often a rationalization, but you didn't do that.
Kuhn: Not me. [Laughter]
97
V WORKING FOR THE JEWISH WELFARE FEDERATION
Dorfman: You expressed a feeling of strength and knowledge in the way
organizations are formed, mutate, and die. Can you, therefore,
tell me first why you went to work for the Jewish Welfare
Federation?
Kuhn: Why I went to work for the Federation? Well, that's very simple.
After I left the blood bank, I was unemployed until September,
'72, when I was engaged as director of the San Francisco Jewish
Community Center. I was there for thirteen months when the 1973
war came to Israel. The Federation asked if they could borrow me
to assist with their fund-raising efforts because I was the only
paid executive within the federation agency family who had any
experience fund raising as a volunteer or professional. I had
been a campaign co-chairman twice. I had been active in the
campaign, you might say, back to 1934. I had been a board member
of the Federation for ten years, active in every type of federation
activity, chairman of social planning, and so on. So I was
delighted to go because I thought I was needed. It was work, I
think, more in keeping with my experience than being director of
the Center.
I had long felt that I would like to work for the Federation
if the opportunity presented itself, so I did. It was a temporary
thing, a loan, until the federation leadership changed and Rabbi
Lurie came in as executive director and invited me to stay. That
was no problem.
The Federation Concept
Dorfman: What can you tell me about the Federation?
98
Kuhn: How many years? [Chuckles] Well, the Federation is, in concept,
the same as it is in every major city and even intermediate-sized
city in the United States. It collects money from its members
for local, national, and overseas needs; does the social planning
to help determine how the community envisions its priorities;
conducts capital funds campaigns when new physical facilities are
involved; and I've done all that. Now I'm director of the Jewish
Community Endowment Fund, which appeals to people on the basis that
they've supported the Federation for anywhere from ten to fifty
years and that participating in the endowment means that their
influence can be felt after they're gone. They can say — a perfectly
natural method of expression — that they or the members of their
family would like to see their name carried on.
Now, every federation differs as to which agencies it supports
or the percentage of its dollar that goes for education or health.
Denver, which is a relatively small intermediate-sized community,
supports two Jewish hospitals; they don't have enough tsouris with
one!
I naturally am very proud of our Federation because we send a
higher percentage of our dollar overseas than almost any other
federation in the country. Our collections are very good, by
which I mean our shrinkage of nonpayment of pledges is very, very
small. I think the Federation has been a unifying force in the
community .
One of its most important things is the continuing involvement
of younger people. When I went on the Federation board, I was
quite junior in age. Then we changed the bylaws so at least three
people have to be board members who are not [yet] thirty-five. We
have a young adults' division created out of a recognition that a
lot of people living and working here were not born here, but they
may have just gone to college here. We've involved them in other
ways — not only about 1,200 of them presently — but they've had
several hundred marriages over the last ten years, which by any
record is a highly successful venture. They're involved in every
aspect — fund raising, social service, athletics, and roommate
finding.
We have a leadership development committee of young couples
whose primary purpose is educating themselves by exposing them
selves to excellent speakers and reading material on a year-around
basis. We have a fine women's division throughout the entire
federation area, which includes Marin, San Francisco, and San Mateo
Counties throughout, and the northern half of Santa Clara County.
99
Kuhn: We don't respond immediately to every new change. Sometimes
we're slow. But we get there. One of our biggest things right
now is developing housing for the well elderly. I think that
within a couple of years we're going to have a considerable
investment in this. But I wouldn't want to say that we're that
much different from federations anywhere else in the sense that
each community decides for itself what it feels it should be
doing.
Feelings About the Federation
Dor f man: How do you feel about the Federation?
Kuhn: I feel good about it. I feel good about it. I feel good about
working for it, about the people I work with. I don't think we
have a tremendous number of people who are complaining about
things. We have a very high number of people who don't support
us. This is true anywhere. There's no place in the country where
this is not true. It's even worse in major cities like New York
or Los Angeles who have such huge populations., You can hardly
keep track of where the people are. Los Angeles County has almost
500,000 Jews, compared to our federation area which has 75,000.
Dorfman: There's a vast difference.
The Jewish Population Shift
Kuhn: A vast difference, just keeping track of them. Then we've had a
population shift, so that in the last fifteen years 20,000 Jews
have moved cut of San Francisco, leaving us with 35,000. The
balance are spread between Marin and the Peninsula. San Francisco
has a very high percentage of elderly Jews ; I would say about one
in six would be above sixty-five.
Dorfman: In San Francisco?
Kuhn: In San Francisco, much less in the other areas. But that's good.
Let them live a long time — L'chayimI In my view of any kind of
social work that I could have involved myself in and have involved
myself in, either professionally or as a volunteer, the Federation
is the most encompassing. It involves every type of Jewish
participation — with little children, with the elderly — every type
of thing involving their lives and their leisure pursuits .
100
Kuhn: The funny thing is that Irving Reichert again is responsible
for this in the first place, because in 1934 he was chairman of
the campaign of the Jewish National Welfare Fund, an organization
which was later merged into the Federation. This was organized in
1925 to raise money for national and overseas needs. The local
needs then were met by the Federation of Jewish Charities, which
was part of the Community Chest, now the United Way. These didn't
get together really until between 1948 and 1955 when they were
formally merged.
So 1 was then an officer of our youth group at Temple Emanu-El,
the Pathfinders, and Rabbi Reichert brought us in to work on the
campaign. I became well acquainted with Annette Saber, who was the
executive of the organization, and when I was about to go out of
the Isavy in 1945, she asked me to be her assistant, which I did not
do. So when I did come to the Federation in 1973, it was sort of
like a twenty-eight-year delay, that's all. [Laughter] An inter
esting coincidence.
I 'noughts on Leaving the San Francisco Jewish Community Center
Jewish Community Center Problems
Dorfman: As you look back, have you ever had second thoughts about having
left the San Francisco Jewish Community Center as executive
director?
Kuan: No, no. I'll tell you why. At the time I was there, they had
fantastic physical problems with the building. The building had
been built in the early '30s. The night it opened I remember
sitting there having a soda with Louis Blumenthal, its executive
director, and he said, "My God, my God, if we had known how many
people were coming, we would have built it bigger in the first
place." That might sound strange, but it's the only building
project I ever knew that raised more money than it needed to build,
It had a surplus. But, at that time, the program was designed so
that the building didn't open until 3:30 in the afternoon when the
kids came from school. There was no senior adult program for
elderly people. It was a much different thing. Now the place
opens at 8:00 in the morning with swimming lessons for kids six
months old. It's going all day long. You have to throw one group
out — you have to throw the little kids out of the auditorium so
that the people seventy years old can have their lunch there.
101
kuhn: But everything was falling apart like a one-horse shay — the
roof, the wiring, the plumbing. If you have a hone, you know
what I'm talking about, except this was on a grander scale.
I remember the Federation board members having voted for an
emergency appropriation of $70,000 to $80,000 to fix up the
electrical system, and my asking at that time, "What goes next?
The roof? The stucco? The plumbing? What goes next?" And
they said, "We don't know."
But then when I got to be director, I found that $70,000 did
not fix up all the electrical system, just part of it. So it
was a battle every day for someone who was technically unprepared
to do that. I would have been prepared if I had finished my
engineering studies in college. So it was a difficult thing
because it would take about half the time just for putting your
finger in the dike. Here was a chance to really get to do some
thing I knew, work with people I had worked with before. The
Center offered many opportunities for satisfaction. Uhen you
realize there were 6,000 people coining who wanted to be there.
It's not like school. So that was a great satisfaction.
But I hadn't been trained for the job. I had been trained for
the community relations aspects of the job, which are very important,
particularly in a center that was growing increasingly less Jewish
in its membership. That part I think I was able to do, to sort of
unify things. Something happened about three months after I left
the Center, a small child was drowned in the Center's pool, the
first tine since 1932.
Liorfinau: That must have been very difficult.
Kuhn: he was taking a lesson and they all went into the shower room.
Somehow he got away from the instructors and got back in the pool.
He didn't drown immediately. He was like a vegetable for months.
It sounds heartless for me to say that I'm glad. I wasn't at the
Center anymore. If I had been there at that time, just knowing
my own disposition, it would have been very, very difficult for
me regardless of responsibility or not.
Dorfiaan: I'm sure it was difficult for you to hear about it.
Kuhn: Oh, God, yes.
102
Major Changes for Federation Volunteers
Dorfman: Let me ask you, in view of your long history as a volunteer, to
come back to the Federation. What would you describe as the major
changes in these many years?
Kuhn: Among the volunteers?
Dorfman: Yes.
Kuhn: I think I was the first volunteer to reach a high position in the
Federation without coining fron a family background of wealth and
importance. I think that's significant, not because it was me,
but that it happened to somebody, and because it has happened to
lots of other people since that time, and nothing's thought of it.
Dorfman: Because you were probably the first, would you say?
Kuhn: I think so. It was done because of my involvement in work for a
long time in many, many areas, primarily fund raising. But not
only that — the social planning and so on. I did whatever they
asked me. It never even occurred to me that eventually I would
have a top position because it all happened very rapidly. For
example, I was in the insurance section of the business and
professional division and every year they'd ask me to be vice-
chairman, but that didn't mean anything because a vice-chairman
haa no additional duties. I still took cards to solicit.
Then one day in the late '50s, a friend of mine, Bennett Raff in,
who was going to be the next chairman of the business and profes
sional division, came up to see me and asked me if I would be
chairman of the insurance section. I said, "Sure." Well, he
practically collapsed that it was that easy to convince somebody
to do this. I would no more turn him down than I would want
anybody to turn me down. We had a very good campaign. The next
tiling I find out they want me to be vice-chairman of the whole
business and professional division, and then they want me to be
chairman of the division. Then they wanted me to be chairman
again.
Well, the structure of the Federation at that time of the
campaign — and remember, the campaign has a structure completely
separate from the normal organization of the Federation as a
corporation. The Federation has the president, Peter Haas; as
campaign chairman, Ron Kaufman. There are two parallel things
going on.
103
Kuhn: Well, being chairman at that time of the business and
professional division was about the biggest job physically
because it involved some thirty or forty sections , from
optometrists to doctors, pharmacists, teachers, and you had
to get a chairman and vice-chairman for each of them — a
tremendous amount of contact work. So I refused. I refused
to take it a second year because, first of all, I was involved
with a tremendous number of organizations at the same time.
None of them meant more to me than the Federation. But I
felt we had really done a poor job if along the way, while
we were raising funds, we hadn't developed leadership; where
you have to ask the same guy to do the same job over again,
something's the matter. One, the leadership may be there and
you're not looking for it, you haven't identified it, which is
a failure on your part, or, if it isn't there, why haven't you
developed it? Why don't you get co-chairmen and have training
courses? So I wouldn't do it. But instead they made me vice-
chairman of the overall campaign.
A vice-chairmanship can be almost like being vice-president.
It can mean something or nothing.
Dorfman: Depending on what you choose to do?
Kuhn: Depending on what the chairman wants to do. But the chairman, in
this case, was a man with whom I'd been vice-chairman at other
states along the way, Richard Goldman. He'd been chairman of the
Business and Professional Division when I was vice-chairman, and
we'd worked on other general endeavors together.
So then the following year I was asked to be co-chairman of
the whole campaign with John Steinhart, an attorney whom I didn't
even know at the time. But he represented the more affluent
segment of the community. His father was Jesse Steinhart, a
very well known attorney and Jewish leader. When I called Dick
Goldman up to tell him about this, he said, "Congratulations.
You've helped me and I'll do anything for you — but work." I
said, "Gee, thanks a lot." [Laughter]
Then we did a creditable job, John and I. This was the
campaign of '62. We had gone over to Europe to see things
there. Then Ben Swig, who was the president of the Federation,
came up with a beautiful line. He said, "Marshall and John
did a great job for us in '62, but for '63 we felt we needed
leadership that was older and more mature, and who's aged more
than these two guys?" [Laughter] He was asking us to do it
again, so we did it again. It was the same as doing it on
104
Kuhn: your own again, because it was splitting up between someone else
and yourself, although there are problems of co-chairmanship just
like there are problems with vice-chairmanship.
During the first campaign, John and I were made members of the
Federation board, albeit without right of vote, which I really
laughed at because I said, "That's like being a little bit pregnant
or something." And they caught the message. So it became almost
understood from then on that anybody who becomes campaign chairman
goes on the Federation board very rapidly. The Federation board
is involved in so many decisions about the campaign that the
campaign chairman has to take part in those decisions. His
influence has to be felt.
Dorfman: That's the way to do it?
Kuhn: Right. Then after that, I worked my way back down again [chuckles]
because along the way one of the other chairmen wanted me to be
vice-chairman again, just simply because he wanted to have access
to the other past chairmen as a sort of an elite society of anyone
who's been a past chairman of the Federation. There's really no
experience quite like it, the things you're subject to — not just
in the size of the gifts, but the development of the whole campaign
as it goes along, and meeting officials of the State of Israel and
the top officials of the United Jewish Appeal, the Joint Distribu
tion Committee, and so on.
Then I worked my way down to chairman of the congregations
division, which we'd never had before. The United Jewish Appeal
had organized a volunteer effort to try to get congregations to do
more philanthropically. So we had eighteen congregations here,
all of whom knew me well. I had spoken from the pulpits of most
of them and each of them told me the same story: "Marshall, we
love you, what you ask is 100 percent right, but you know we've
got a building fund plan coming up, and we have so much trouble
raising money for ourselves. We're just not going to have the
energy to do anything more for Israel."
I admit that I was biased toward Israel, but I could hardly
excuse them when I realized that Temple Emanu-El of Honolulu,
where I had spoken, had spent all of its energy during the 1950s
raising money for a new sanctuary and hadn't sent a cent overseas.
I don't believe that you, at home, come first and that your over
seas brethren come second.
So, anyway, we scrapped the congregations division and I next
chaired the religious school division. I'd chair anything except
the women's division. [Chuckles]
105
Dor f man: Why not?
Kuhn: Well, the women do very well without my help. I've had a standard
answer over the years when people say, "Marshall, we've read your
bio and you belong to every organization but this." I say, "Oh,
no. No, it looks that way, but I've done very little directly for
the Mothers' Milk Bank — indirectly, maybe, but not directly."
The Federation's Future
Dorfman: What changes do you see in the future for the Federation?
Kuhn: Well, we're going to be involved in — over how many years?
Dorfman: Let's say the next twenty-five years.
Kuhn: That's too much. Somebody asked me to do a big study of how the
Blue Shield looks , about the changes of government involvement in
health plans for the next twenty-five years. I said, "Here's a
hundred questions. You answer those and I'll start to build up my
response."
Certainly they are going to be more involved in care of the well
aged. They have to be. This is probably with a great deal of in
put by the federal government. The groups that are organized for
it will do better than the groups that are not organized for it,
but a lot of our own resources will have to go in there. Any means
of keeping these people out of an institution for maximum care,
delaying it — in other words , if you could keep them at home or in
any kind of facility where they're getting minimal nursing care,
they're so far better off than putting them all in a home for the
aged. That's one area.
I would like to feel we could make some meaningful improvement
in religious education. I can't see that happening unless each
congregation decides to yield some of its autonomy to a central
organization. That may sound like a cop out, but it's so much
more efficient. You get better teachers, better training, better
facilities such as we have here at the Ben Yehuda School, which
has absorbed all the elementary Hebrew education for every school
in San Francisco, except Emanu-El. That's much more than any
school could do for itself.
[end tape 4, side B]
106
[begin tape 5, side A]
Kuhn: Now, to continue with the aged. Wnen we have more of the well
elderly living in their homes, or in any arrangement other than
a maximum care institution, the Center has to be prepared either
within its own walls or [with] some other arrangement to provide
services of a social, recreational, and cultural nature for them.
I'm not sure what we're going to find in the next twenty-five
years. It's probably been found already in some of the other
communities. We've just delayed, and I think this is because
the nature of any organization, whether it's a federation or —
the greatest example to me is the school system. You can only
make one major change a year. It just cannot handle the disruption
of more of that because you've got to keep on doing the other
things you have been doing.
As valid evidence for this theory of mine, I think of the
experience of the San Francisco Unified School District. In
the last ten years, and maybe ever since Brown versus Board of
Education, the district has been completely off balance. No
matter what they do, they're hit by something else. There's a
new regulation at the city, state, or federal level, and they
just cannot adjust to it. They have to adjust to minor variations
in racial make-up, changing standards of earthquake resistance —
you just can't do these. Also, changes in educational philosophy,
and as W.H. Ferry stated, and I'm willing to quote him, "No major
statement about education can be proven. ''
Dorfman: That's an interesting statement.
Kuhn: It's an interesting statement from an article about Charles Eliot,
the president of Harvard, by his great-grandson, who said that
everybody didn't agree that his grandfather was the greatest
educator there was. Ferry was one of his critics and then Ferry
admitted that he couldn't prove it either.
107
VI ThL RABBIS AND CANTORS OF TEMPLE EMANU-EL
Uorfman: In general, how do you feel about the rabbis in San Fiancisco?
Kuhn: Well, in what decade is this going to be read? [Chuckles] Let
me say this. There was an expression in baseball about a player —
the fellow who hits the home runs gets paid more than anybody else.
So they asked about this fellow and they said, "Lots of field, no
hit," and that's what I feel about most of the rabbis. I like them
all personally, and I think they have a tremendous variation in
their effectiveness and in their willingness to be effective.
Their roles are cut out for them.
But whatever they say is not necessarily the position in
Judaism that I set out for myself or for the community because
we have a very knowledgeable laity, although not knowledgeable
in Judaism. Many rabbis aren't teaching Judaism much anymore.
They're involving themselves in a lot of other things in which
they're no more expert than anybody else.
Now, giving them their due in that they're in a very difficult
profession and in a very difficult time, nonetheless, there are
classic examples of great rabbis. I just don't happen to see any
of them necessarily on this scene. I may be doing them a great
injustice because I may be seeing them from a very privileged
position in which nobody could look good. Maybe a rabbi doesn't
impress his wife even. This is no particular criticism of them,
but I just don't see any giants among them.
Least Effective Rabbinical Contributions
Dorfman: Would you like to talk about their least effective contributions?
We're talking now, I assume, about the current rabbis.
108
Kuhn: Well, let me give you an example. We have been trying for some
time to meet the needs of individuals who don't belong to congre
gations but who find themselves sick at home, lonely, maybe in a
nursing home, maybe in a hospital other than Mt. Zion. At first
we thought we could meet this need by engaging a community rabbi,
a community chaplain, and we did this. We engaged Rabbi Arthur
Dies. As a matter of fact, I was chairman of the committee that
engaged him. It soon became apparent that he would have enough of
a caseload just by serving Mt. Zion Hospital and a few other
institutions. Mt. Zion wanted it that way. lo serve any other
institutions or individuals at home we would have to find some
other means.
Now, at best, this is a very difficult type of assignment for
any rabbi or anybody. Nobody likes to be continually in the
position of calling on sick people, unbalanced people, chronically
ill people, lonely people. So we decided that we weren't going to
necessarily go out and engage someone new. We were going to try
and get the rabbis of the community, the pulpit rabbis, to make an
occasional call or adopt an institution in their neighborhood — a
nursing home, for example, or a general hospital. The response to
this request has been so mixed as to be discouraging.
Very few rabbis have interpreted this request as any type of
obligation for rabbis. The fact that these unaffiliated people
have needs similar to their own congregants' doesn't impel these
rabbis to adopt these people as part of their flock. That's their
right and maybe their congregation wants them to take that position.
But I would have hoped that they could have just said, "All right,
to the best of our ability we'll go one step farther and if there's
any possible way of working this in, we'll do it. And if we can't,
we'll see that our cantor does it, or the senior teacher, or the
president of the men's club could organize a committee." Maybe in
time that will happen.
But it hasn't happened as yet, and I'm sure that if you ask this
question of the rabbis they would say that it's a matter of inter
pretation, that "Kuhn's not sitting where we're sitting, he doesn't
know the needs I have to meet, the small budget, etc., etc." We
always like to ask the impossible of somebody else, but that
definitely has not been a stunning success.
You would think that when somebody in the community who wants a
rabbi's hands on him, for whatever needs, that would be something
that we could provide. It doesn't even cost anything. But we
haven't been able to do it. We've been able to organize some lay
people to take these elderly and lonely people shopping, to the
doctor's office, but as far as religious needs, which is what some
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Kuhn: people — that's what they want; they want to see a rabbi. Maybe
they want to see a rabbi about something which he considers
inconsequential, or the rabbi figures, "Well, the person's so
far gone they don't even know I'm there." I don't know all of
those answers, but it's not a record we're proud of.
Dorfman: The reason for the mixed response is not a simple one?
Kuhn: No, no. Some rabbis have a smaller congregation and they can do
this. But there are some — I don't want to imply that no rabbis
are doing this. There are some who are. I just wish it were a
higher percentage.
Rabbi Louis Newman, 1924-1930
Uorfman: What can you tell me about Rabbi Newman?
Kuhn: Well, at the end of his career he sent me everything that he still
had dealing with his years in California. I gave it all to Magnes
[Museum] after having it photographed at the American Jewish
Archives in Cincinnati.
I remember him first as a little boy. He was this great big
handsome man, and I had been told to stay after school because I
had been bad in the first grade. So here, as the assembly breaks
up, they all march past me out the doors of this big building on
Sutter Street. He looks down and he says, "Little boy, why are
you here?" I said, "I was naughty and I was told to stay and see
you." He said, "You won't do it again, will you?" I said,
"Never." "Okay, go home." I thought, "Boy, there is the essence
of charity." [Chuckles] He didn't even ask me what I had done.
So he was in my book as a great man to begin with.
Then my mother used to make him hamantaschen, and then he
prepared me for and conducted my bar mitzvah and my two brothers',
and also their confirmations, and he buried my father, and then he
went away. When I went to New York in 1939 to see the fair, I
looked him up. He had me over for dinner and he had three sons a
little younger than I was and we talked about the Yankees. I'd
seen the Yankees play three days before and he even knew the score
of the game — three days before. I thought, "This guy is a genius."
All of a sudden, three years later I'm in New York for my naval
training and he was still just so personably hospitable and so was
his wife. She was a wonderful person, Lucile Newman. They'd take
me to plays in New York, movies, and, of course, we'd talk about
110
Kuhn: people in San Francisco. He still remembered many people with
great affection, particularly the Rinders. So whenever they
would come out here and the Rinders would have a luncheon or
dinner for them, my wife and I would be invited.
Then there was a big hiatus in our correspondence. He would
write me [chuckles], but I wouldn't write back, which was a
ridiculous thing because I had somehow the idea that my letter
had to be some kind of example of perfection or something. But
he never even asked me why I didn't. He just accepted it as this
human fault.
When I began going to New York again, I'd see him, and when I
was there for the American Association of Blood Banks in '67, he
had me out for luncn. He was just so nice to me. Then, of course,
he became ill. He had a stroke, and when he passed away I helped
to raise some funds for an institution in Israel to which he was
close. Then when his wife passed away, I did the same for her.
In my younger years he was the example for me of what a rabbi
should be litte. Later on, as I grew older and he changed, I
realized that that would not then have been my criteria. First
of all, he overquoted other rabbis of authority, even though with
great skill. He even asked at Temple Emanu-El if he could quote
Groucho Marx from that pulpit. [Laughter] But he was a man who
was a marvelous orator, a great scholar, a great man.
As his example for me — at one time I considered going into the
rabbinate, and I think one of my greatest contributions to American
Judaism is when I abandoned that plan. [Laughter]
Dorfman: There are people who might argue that.
Kuhn: Well, it's a long, long road. You have to have a certain hard skin
about you, which I lack, and I hadn't had any Hebrew training, any
adequate Hebrew training as a child, and that you have to have,
even though I knew rabbis who made it in spite of that. But it's
not the easiest way to do it.
Rabbi Irving F. Reichert. 1930-1947
Dorfman: You said at one point that the basic focus of your character came
from Rabbi Reichert.
Kuhn: Well, I would say that the basic focus of my character came from
my mother, from my parents, but as far as ethics in any formal
sense — when I was in the religious school, you went to
Ill
Kuhn: pre-confiraation class in the tenth grade. You came after school
during the week and then you came again on Sunday morning. I was
excused from that after school because my mother was a widow and
I had to have a job after school. This was during the depression.
Then the next year, which was junior year, you had to go during
the week to meet with the rabbi, and on Sunday morning to meet
with the teacher. The rabbi said that in addition you were to
come to services on Friday night and Saturday morning "x" number
of times a year (I don't remember what it was), and then he told
the boys to expect to usher. By that time, I'd lost my job at the
wholesale jeweler's. I was a junior at Lowell. So I took the
ushering seriously. Pretty soon I was ushering every Saturday
morning and I did it for five years. That's right — from '32 to
'37, because '37 is when I went to work for the bank.
During that time I heard him preach on a great many subjects
completely unconnected with Zionism — the meaning of good and evil,
and aspects of Judaism. I couldn't tell you what they are now.
You have to realize that things were very much formalized then.
For example, the confirmation ceremony was written by him, all
the English parts. You memorized your speech as you memorized the
Hebrew part. I had one in English and one in Hebrew, but this was
the basic — it was Irving Reichert Judaism. [That] is what I
remember, and there are many like me. Therefore, I say — how do
people rate the rabbis at Temple Emanu-El? You have to ask a child
or a grown-up, "Who would you want to marry you?" And they'll say,
"Rabbi So-and-So." And you ask, "VJhy?" And the guy might say,
"I don't know. I just feel close to him." It's about as scientific
as Louis Newman patting me on the head and telling me to go home.
I don't know.
One time Rabbi Irving Hausman told the story of his grandfather
sitting in the succah outside his home in some little shtetl in
Eastern Europe. His grandfather lived in the succah for a whole
week. This was such a poignant story; it brought you closer to
the rabbi, that that had been a very big part of his life. If a
child has even one rabbi he can relate to, that he would like to
be married by, I think that's marvelous. It doesn't always have
to be the same one. Those are value judgments that are impossible
to explain.
Dorfman: You indicated that Rabbi Reichert was, at least at one time or
perhaps several times, a controversial rabbi and that you found
much to differ on with him.
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Kuhn: Yes. Well, the first thing he was controversial about was his
anti-Zionist position, because he put his views right up front.
In 19A3, on the eve of Yom Kippur (I was overseas at the time,
but the echo soon reached me), he made the statement that "it's
time for everybody to choose" and "you're either with me or you're
against me." That's a little like a call to arms. People don't
like being challenged like that. Besides, where were they going
to go? They weren't going to join Sherith Israel. A few dropped
out. Reggie Goldstine quit. She'd been a faculty member and came
back again after he left.
tie had packed the board with members of the American Council
for Judaism. This was one of their strongholds here. Over half
of the national membership was from the San Francisco Bay Area.
When people said they didn't believe that anybody could have that
much of an effect educationally, I said, "Look at Irving Reichert.
If he talks to you about this thing month after month, year after
year, and you want his approval, you're going to change." So much
so that — . Ke finally abandoned his position after he visited
Israel in 1956, and he had long left the congregation nine years
before. He renounced the American Council for Judaism, but no one
paid the slightest bit of attention because he'd lost his power
base.
-.
That's exactly as predicted when they discovered the Dead Sea
Scrolls — what will this mean to Christianity? Nothing. And it
hasn't meant a thing. The fact that Jesus was a member of this
small Essene group down by the Dead Sea — that hasn't changed
anybody. So this switch by Irving Reichert didn't change. The
damage had been done. When I say damage, I'm talking about the
damage to community solidarity, the loss of support for Israel.
When you consider that certain people were giving us huge sums of
money prior to Israel becoming a state and all of a sudden they
stop giving at all, that's one way in which he was controversial.
The second way was his own character, his own personality.
During this battle he himself must have been tremendously dis
couraged, in spite of what he felt was the correct position,
that all his colleagues in the United States, the men he'd been
ordained with, were on the other side — or most of them. They took
it out on him in certain ways. His son told me that he couldn't
get even a volunteer assignment during World War II. He was
invited to visit a series of Army training camps and all of a
sudden he'd find that after he'd accepted, the offer was then
revoked. His ex-colleagues had gotten to the Army and the Jewish
Welfare Board and said, "We're going to isolate him." So he paid
for his position.
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Kuhn: There were certain changes in his personality. He told me,
for example — when he asked me to be religious school principal,
he told me that he hated kids, and, of course, you're not going
to make many adherents among kids. Did I tell the story about
the kids' response to his suggestion that they stand up in his
presence?
Dorfman: No, you didn't.
Kuhn: Well, he asked me to talk to the student council. It was customary
when a rabbi came into a room, all the children stood. I knew this
only through my own experience. If you were taking military science
at Berkeley and a major came into the room, you stood. I presented
this to the student council, suggesting that all the class in the
religious school do this, and they wouldn't do it. They said,
"This rabbi is not a holy man. We won't do it." They would not do
it. There was no way I could make them do it. So I told him that,
and I have no idea whether at the time he thought I was ineffective
or that I had sabotaged it.
He would stop coming out after services on Friday night into the
foyer and greeting people. When Harold Zellerbach asked him why,
he would say, "Well, it's bad for my throat." This is one of the
things that Harold Zellerbach documented as evidence that he really
had lost the desire to serve, because when he was finally discharged
it was by unanimous vote of a board of directors whom he had hand-
picked. They were all members of the American Council for Judaism.
So his being forced to leave had nothing to do with Zionism at all
or anti-Zionism. It had to do with the fact that as a rabbi he'd
had it.
A lot of people didn't know in what way he'd changed. If you
hadn't been there since he came, and then your child began going to
religious school in the mid- '40s or something, you wouldn't have
known him before. You wouldn't know if he'd changed or if he'd
always been that way.
The point was that he was so changeable anyway. If he wanted to
charm you — oh, my God, there was nobody who would be more charming.
There would be no one who would be more effective in an extemporaneous
argument than he was. His greatest success was during the war when
he did some labor mediation. If he had been an attorney, as is his
son, maybe that would have been the greatest kind of career he might
have had. The whole tradition had been that his was the fifth
generation in an unbroken line of rabbis.
So it was his changeability in many ways. I felt that because
he would ask me as religious school principal for my views about
something — about education or about something dealing with the youth
Kuhn: group — to work up something. I'd come back three weeks later and
he would talk to me as if I was nuts. Where did I get the idea
that he was interested in this thing? I'd seen Gaslight, and so
I figured that no one was going to do this with me. (As a matter
of fact, I saw Gaslight with Rabbi and Mrs. Newman.) So no one
was going to get me thinking I was crazy.
But a great waste of real, real human talent. He wasn't
unsympathetic to every cause. He was very sympathetic because
of German Jewry, particularly [in] assisting rabbis, refugee
rabbis, coming and settling here. There are still some around
that we helped to bring over. But, basically, an unfathomable
man, completely. When I say unfathomable — if anybody would say,
"How do you get Irving Reichert to do this?" I said, "There's no
way you can be sure. You don't know whether to ask him before
breakfast, or after breakfast, or before dinner, or when his
glands are going to do this or that — just no way."
Yet there are people who remember him with great affection.
One of my real battles with Temple Emanu-El was over this. I
used to wander around creating in my own mind arguments that I
would have with him to really show him the light, that he could
be loved if he would only act like a human being, let people
reach him. Well, I never used any of the arguments.
In 1950, 1955, and 1960 we had reunions of the various confir
mation classes, all part of a five-year scheme to raise money for
the congregation for a new elevator or whatever it might be. So
in 1960 I got the idea that Irving Reichert should sit on the
pulpit during this confirmation reunion service. Inasmuch as
we were going to get a message from New York from Rabbi Newman,
let Rabbi Reichert enjoy the fact of the presence of members of
his eighteen classes. So I wrote to him and he responded asking,
"Shall I bring my robe?" which means, "Am I going to be on the
pulpit?" At that point, Temple Emanu-El decided that was a bad
idea, that I should disinvite him, at which point I should have
said to the Temple, "Go to hell." But I was chicken —
Dorfman: It was a very difficult position.
Kuhn: I should have just walked away from the situation. I'm no better
or worse than anyone else who is afraid to do the right thing.
Maybe worse. So I wrote him saying, "No, you won't need your
robe because you won't be sitting on the pulpit." So he called
me and he said, "I'm sure you'll understand that under those
circumstances I can't come." I said, "I not only understand it,
I'm humiliated. I'm crestfallen."
115
Kuhn: Well, within a half an hour I got a call from his son, who
came over to see me. We were good friends. The way this was
arranged was that each class would have a representative at the
ceremony, and I had sixty-one classes represented. So this was
over two- thirds of all the classes that had ever been confirmed,
and Irving, Jr. was representing his class.
So he said, "I'm not going to be in this thing. The Temple
insulted my father." I said, "Well, I can sympathize with you,
but on the other hand your name is in the program, you were at
the rehearsals. Don't be an ass because we're all asses." He
said, "Okay, I'll do it for you. But we won't stay for the
reception." I said, "Okay." And he did, a lovely affair.
Two years later when Irving Reichert's grandson Joshua was a
bar mitzvah, it was okay for Rabbi Reichert to be on the pulpit
at that time. Irving Reichert gave the sermon, he blessed his
grandson, but it wasn't okay in 1960. That ended any substantial
formal efforts on my behalf for the congregation, except dealing
with children.
I had several other things of a similar nature, which I'll be
happy to go into if you want, but this one was the — I kept thinking,
"How can you do this to a man who only wants to see his former
students and they want to see him? He's married some of them and
buried their parents. What are you running?" That ended this for
me. I'll deal with the kids, teach them Sunday school, take them
up to the Mother Lode, but I'm not going to work with your adults
any more.
Dorfman: That must have been just a terrible experience.
Kuhn: It put me in a terrible place because it was then so close to the —
in fact, if I had pulled out, the whole thing would have fallen
apart. I should have done it anyway, maybe. I don't know. So I
don't know.
Dorfman: Was this the incident to which you referred when you began to
speak of the youth group and Irving Reichert?
Kuhn: No. Irving Reichert was involved in terminating a group called the
Pathfinders, which had been started in 1921 by Rabbi Martin Meyer
and continued on ever since. When Rabbi Newman came, his wife
started a parallel organization for young women called the Reviewers,
In the depression, in the '30s, there were many families who would
drop temple membership the moment that a child was confirmed. They
either couldn't afford it, or they ranked it low on their scale of
priorities after their child was confirmed. They didn't see the
service as meeting their needs.
116
Kuhn: So Irving Reichert, either on his own, or at the inspiration
or instigation of others, tried to form a young people's group
composed of the children of congregants, but where these children
had not attended religious school. There were some very influential
families that didn't send any or all of their children to Sunday
school. So he formed this group and scheduled it to meet the same
night as the Pathfinders.
[end tape 5, side A; begin tape 5, side B]
Kuhn: It was about 1939. I was then a little too old for the youth group.
I was sort of senior adviser to them, and I remember our last meet
ing was held the same night that his group met. It was obvious
that the two couldn't exist side by side, and they both died. The
minutes of the Pathfinders, of the whole thing from 1921 to 1939,
have been photocopied. They're sitting there in Magnes. The
originals are in the archives room at Temple Emanu-El, so you can
read this last chapter.
Dorfman: Yes, I'd like to.
Kuhn: And you can also look over the years and see what kind of programs
they had. They were very high-class programs, intellectually. A
lot of the students, of course, were college students who would
attend the meetings on Sunday nights and then go back to Berkeley,
particularly before the age of confirmation was dropped from junior
to sophomore. Sometimes they'd bring over a professor from Berkeley.
It was a great organization and I got to be president of it while
I was a sophomore in college. I was living at home rather than
Berkeley and I almost flunked out, just spending so much time, as
you can. But I learned a lot about organizational life, particularly
about trying to do too much yourself.
Dorfman: What else can you add relating to Rabbi Reichert 's discharge?
Kuhn: When he left, at the end of 1947, it was clear we would not have a
successor probably until the following fall. The Temple board and
selection committee started what is sometimes referred to as a
rabbinical derby. Various contestants would come out on the weekend
and preach at Temple on Friday night and Saturday morning, and then
on Saturday afternoon they would be subjected to inquisition by
members of the selection committee.
But, apart from that somewhat undignified procedure, there were
positive aspects. Everything we had to do during that period of
time we had to do on our own, without rabbinical help, other than
these people who came in to speak. And so there was a very viable
volunteer structure that was operating, showing really in depth how
much people care about the Temple. Now, once we got the rabbi,
things eventually reverted to normal.
117
Kuhn: And I found the same thing happened at Beth El, that in the
years between their being a branch at Temple Emarm-El Religious
School and their having their own congregation, with volunteers
who really love the work, there was a great spirit. But, once
you have a professional staff doing it for you, it's not the same
spirit. It's the same thing as in Israel. The present generation
are not the pioneers; their fathers and grandfathers were.
A Love-Hate Relationship with Temple Emanu-El
In Loco Parentis
Dorfman: Can you tell me about what you called your love-hate relationship
with Temple Emanu-El?
Kuhn: Right. How can one have a love-hate relationship with an institu
tion? Well, there's no explanation. It's either there or not.
My mother died in 1939. I had two older brothers, one married.
But I felt closer to people in the Temple. So when I went into
the armed forces and I got an identification bracelet, it said on
it, "In the event of accidents, notify Congregation Emanu-El, San
Francisco." That was my in loco parentis. So if Temple Emanu-El
did something bad, that was like a parent doing something bad. I
still have that bracelet and have talked to my classes about it to
try to show them how at least one young person had felt during his
youth. It's hard to really know if they catch the relationship,
because I'm sure I was one of the few. But my life was so involved
with the Temple.
Let me, while it's still fresh in my mind, tell this story about
the men's club. When I was president of the youth group I thought
that I should, therefore, also be a member of the men's club, so as
to act as a liaison, so that the members of these organizations so
far apart in age might be drawn together, maybe in some kind of
programs for young men seeking career information, and I became
vice-president of the men's club.
In that same year (this would be about 1950 or '51), I was also
program chairman. So I wanted to arrange a program on the UC
loyalty oath. I called Regent John Francis Neylan and asked if he
would debate one of the professors who hadn't signed, and he said
no, he was too old for that, but he would speak at a meeting before
or after the professor's appearance. We asked him to speak the
first night. He did a very creditable job and was very well
received.
118
Kuhn: The next meeting, two weeks later, the speaker was Professor
Charles Muscatine in the English department. He was sort of a
leader of the nineteen professors. And he did a fine job. He
represented my position, so I leaned over and spoke to Rabbi Fine
and said, "If you feel like I do, why don't you get up and announce
that you're going to give some money from your discretionary fund
toward the professors' legal defense?" which he did.
The next day some of these men went to see Rabbi Fine to protest
that the official Temple fund, even though it's discretionary, would
be used for this purpose, because it was a purpose that they didn't
agree with. They were for the regents and the state.
Now, a couple of months after that the nominating committee of
the men's club came to meet and I was the obvious choice to be
selected as president. But I wasn't selected president. The
argument was that "if we nominate Kuhn, it's the same as making
the rabbi president of the men's club, they're so close together."
Now, Alvin Fine could not have cared less about the men's club, as
is evidenced by the fact that he attended the men's club several
years later and got himself so exercised telling them that they
stood for nothing that he subsequently, that same night, had a
heart attack, which led to his eventual resignation from the
Temple. So they did not nominate me.
But they nominated a man, Eugene B. Block, who had been a
member of the men's club for many years but had never been active.
He had no idea why he was being nominated. When subsequently he
found out that he was being nominated in my stead, he asked me to
meet with him. I explained it and he said, "Well, next year,
instead of accepting a second one-year term, I'll campaign for
you. You'll be president next year." I said, "Well, we'll see."
I didn't quit the men's club as I should have done. Again, either
no guts or no brains or maybe a super dedication, because I thought,
"If they feel this way about Alvin Fine, who is a close personal
friend of mine — I met my wife in his home; we had taught a number
of confirmation classes together — maybe I'll stick around just to
help him out."
The next year the nominating committee met again and they decided
to stay with Eugene Block for the second time, and Eugene Block
decided to stay with Eugene Block, at which point I lost all my
respect for him, although I'm sure he doesn't realize it. On the
surface we're good friends. But I felt I deserved to be president.
I still stayed as a member of the men's club for several years
and then I quit. Then several years later they sent someone to
see me to say that if I thought I had reformed and was willing to
119
Kuhn: start all over again as treasurer and work myself way up through
the secretaryship, I could have another crack at the presidency.
But I thought, "That's a little too much chutzpah for me."
At one point I was nominated or considered for nomination as a
board member of the Temple, and the argument there against me was:
"Marshall Kuhn, although he lives in San Francisco and belongs to
our Temple, is an employee of Temple Beth El in San Mateo. He's a
religious school principal and if he's on our board, he'll give
them all our secrets." You may not believe that, but that's true.
That's what they had on me. So I've been trying ever since to
figure out what these secrets are. The fact that they have a
deficit — is that a secret? I don't know. I don't know.
So, anyway, I think you can begin to see some of the reasons
why I figured, "To hell with the adults at Temple Emanu-El. I'll
stick with the kids." Thus ends our lesson for the night. [Laughter]
Cantor Reuben Kinder, 1913-1959
[Interview 4: August 11, 1977]
Kuhn: Do I have on tape the story with Cantor Kinder about the General
Marshall thing?
Dorfman: No, you don't. This would be a good place for you to speak about
Cantor Reuben Kinder.
Kuhn: I knew him all my life because he was there the whole time. He was
always there. Of course, much of what is known about him is recorded
by his wife in her oral interview, for which I feel a little respon
sibility, because I convinced her that The Bancroft Library was not
going to eat her up. [Chuckles]
She was very apprehensive about revealing confidences because
she's a private person, but she knew everybody and everything, not
only about Temple but the Jewish scene and the musical scene. They
were completely devoted to each other and he was completely devoted
to Temple Emanu-El. They always lived at 3877 Jackson. My wife
and I have had so many superb meals in that home, from which she
moved only after she became a widow.
Reuben Kinder would be, if there is such a person, the essence
of a pious man in the reform sense. I don't mean that at cockcrow
he would get up in the morning and say his prayers. I don't know
that. But everywhere he was supposed to be, with respect to the
religious functioning of that synagogue, he was there. When they
had rabbis, when they didn't, when the rabbis were in the armed
forces — whatever it might be.
120
Kuhn: Of course, he'd trained me for my bar mitzvah. It wasn't any
great training, because the bar mitzvah service at that time at
Emanu-El was a very pro forma thing, but that wasn't his fault.
That's just the way things were. He trained us to sing in our
confirmation ceremony. His theory of getting you to sing was to
have you sing more. If you didn't perform well enough, it never
was, "Well, we'll knock it off today and start again next week."
It was, "Let's sing it again one more time," and then one more
time after that.
So much so that the way you could tell the devotion people felt
toward him was in the number of children who wanted him to marry
them when they grew older, because they felt he represented all
that was best in Temple and Jewish life.
He was particularly responsible, of course, for the discovery
of Yehudi Menuhin and Isaac Stern and other musical luminaries,
because he had this great following of congregants and other
friends who trusted his musical judgment, evaluating potentials
of young people.
Also, he brought to the Temple musical performances, the symphony,
the municipal chorus, great stars. He developed the choir, which
had a number of people who became opera singers — Dorothy Warenskjold
for one; Stanley Noonan, who has, according to Reuben Kinder, an
operatic quality voice, but who had no ambitions to live anywhere
else but Palo Alto.
This, as I mentioned before, was partially perhaps compensation
for the fact that at a prime age of life, Reuben Rinder had lost
his own voice for effective singing. He started singing again,
perhaps five or ten years before his fiftieth anniversary with the
Temple. But there were years and years, perhaps the majority of
the years he was there, where children did not hear a chazan
singing chants. They had a magnificently trained choir, a great
organist, and great arrangements of the liturgy. But they didn't
hear the chazan sing, something which I think was a great lack in
the Temple.
Now, at various times there would be a group saying, "Well, let's
do something about it. Let's get a cantor who can sing. Let's kick
Reuben Rinder upstairs and make him musical director." But Reuben
Rinder had in his very quiet way built up his fences, so to speak,
and any such ploy never got — well, I'm using baseball terminology,
so I'll say it never got beyond first base. It at least makes me
consistent, although completely irrelevant.
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Kuhn: But he was a real friend and one of his charms was his
acknowledged [pauses] — I'm trying to get the right phrase —
forgetfulness. It seems that for a year or two after we moved
Sunday school from Sutter Street out to the new Temple, he
would continue to make appointments at the old building, not
realizing it.
Then there was the time I was principal of the religious
school in the year '47- '48, a very eventful year in the Temple's
life and in the life of Israel, when General George C. Marshall
resigned as ambassador plenipotentiary to China. I was up there
cne late afternoon. I walked into the Temple office, and there
is Reuben Kinder scanning the headlines of the afternoon paper,
which read simply, "Marshall Resigns," whereupon he turned to me
and said in complete seriousness, "What's the matter? Aren't
they treating you right here? What do you want? More money?
What is this?" So I said, "Robbie, it has nothing to do with
this, nothing to do with it at all. This isn't me." "Oh, that
other one!" Well, it was hilarious. I've told that story so
many times.
In stature he was a very small man, as chazanim frequently
are, and very gentle. He had set patterns. He would finish
the service on Saturday and either his wife would give him a
ride up the hill to Jackson Street, or he'd start to walk and
somebody invariably would give him a ride, and he'd be taken
inside for the kidd"sh. Mrs. Rinder was a superb cook and baked
her own challah. Someone, of course, would always give him a
bottle of shabbes or holiday wine.
Cantor Reuben Rinder and Rabbi Louis Newman
Kuhn: Regardless of the age difference between us (I was in college at
the same time as their son Bobby), that didn't make any difference.
We both were bound by Emanu-El and by a joint affection for Louis
Newman, who had been rabbi here perhaps at the apex of Temple
Emanu-El 's influence in this city during this century. And who,
when he left for New York in 1930, left behind Reuben Rinder as
his local agent, as it were, because wherever each one visited —
Louis Newman coming here, or Reuben Rinder going to New York,
because Mrs. Rinder had a brother there — they always spent more
time in each other's company than otherwise would have been the
case. They kept each other informed by writing. There was a
unique relationship between Rabbi Newman and Cantor Rinder.
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Kuhn: Louis Newman eventually gave me all of his papers dealing
with his years in California. I then had copies of all these
papers sent to the Judah L. Magnes Memorial Museum in Berkeley
and the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati.
The cantor literally had thousands of friends because he never
made an enemy. He had a very delightful sense of humor. He told
the story about one confirmation class he was teaching and he
wrote on the blackboard the word minyan and he asked, "What does
this mean?" One smart aleck kid raised his hand and said, "It's
a French opera and you spelled it wrong." [Laughter]
Well, these went into his bag of jokes over the years. Of
course, everything wasn't always so smooth, because when he
retired and Cantor Portnoy was brought in to replace him, you
had two singers. The great luck was that Reuben Kinder had
been a tenor and Joe Portnoy is a baritone. It wasn't luck for
Portnoy, because all of the arrangements were for tenors. But
there was little friction between them because Cantor Portnoy
wanted to be his own man and not have to fight the shadow of
his predecessor, who had retired, but who, you might say, had
no place else to go. This was not an unusual situation. So
there were some difficulties there, but not being a musical
person I never had to worry about those.
I think I might have mentioned that one of Cantor Kinder 's
Hebrew faculty was Yehudi Menuhin's father, Moshe, who was my
brother's teacher and who took all the coins out of his pocket
one day and held them in front of my brother Mort and said,
"I'll give you all this money, all this money, if you'll tell me,
if you'll recite for me, the first verse of "Adon Olom," and my
brother Mort asked, "What's the first word?" [Laughter]
It was a gay time down there on Sutter Street. On Succoth
they'd give everybody apples. My brother Mort threw one through
the window one time, but the window wasn't open, unfortunately.
[Chuckles] Some of the events would be held on the festivals
down in the Scottish Rite Auditorium and, of course, Reuben
Rinder would be rehearsing the music with all the religious
school grades to sing at all these festivals and assemblies.
He loved to hear the children sing. A great memory, to have a
man like that as your friend for so long.
Dorfman: What was unique about Cantor Rinder?
Kuhn: I think his gentleness. His gentleness. He was never harsh with
anybody, or if he had to be harsh at least it was as little as
possible. He was just a sweet, gentle man. He had his little
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Kuhn: study up above the Temple, all his musical arrangements. He
was always working on something. Saturday nights he and his
wife would be going with friends to the symphony, the opera.
It's just a pattern — as I sit here, I'm seeing him in my
mind's eye, walking up Arguello Boulevard, about to go up the
hill. You would think all he had to do was spread out his
arms and the wind would blow him up.
He was really a frail man and completely impractical in many
ways. He never wanted to drive a car, got along perfectly well
without it because he could get anyone to take him anywhere he
wanted to go. He was known by everybody. Literally every Jew
in the community knew who Cantor Reuben R. Rinder was after
fifty years with the leading synagogue, and he played such a
commanding role in musical circles and, as we know, music is
such an essential part of Judaism. He was just known by every
body. A great, great man.
Dorfman: Would you say that he had been an outstanding cantor?
Kuhn: I'm not qualified musically to tell that. I'm sure he must have
been. He must have had great promise to have been called by
Emanu-El in the first place, because they had a good musical
tradition even before he came. But it became even better,
because when he had to devote himself to being musical director,
he was responsible for both developing the concept and securing
the funding for having special shabbat services composed by
Frederick Jacobi, and Bloch, by Darius Milhaud — I think five in
all. The names of all five composers can be easily found in the
Reuben Rinder Collection at Magnes. No other musical personality
has ever come close to this level of religious musical output.
This was his high watermark.
But I couldn't really qualify myself to tell you what kind of
a cantor he was. I just don't know. As I say, I rarely heard
him sing except in the last few years because he had lost his
voice previously, from some illness.
Cantor Joseph L. Portnoy, 1959
Dorfman: Do you think he had more of an impact on the lives of his congre
gants than succeeding cantors?
Kuhn: The only succeeding cantor would be Dr. Portnoy, who has only
been there, I think, about fifteen years. By the way, he's the
senior man at Temple Emanu-El. I think it's too soon to tell,
and they have different styles of voices anyway.
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Rabbi Joseph Asher, 1968
Dorfman: What could you tell me about Rabbi Joseph Asher?
Kuhn: Rabbi Asher came to Emanu-El to fill a vacancy created by the
resignation of Rabbi Irving Hausman due to illness. At that
time, which was perhaps eight or nine years ago, I was still
principal at Beth El. I didn't come back to the Emanu-El
faculty until the fall of '71. I had more or less separated
myself from any other activity of an adult nature, and it
wasn't until I really got involved on the faculty again that
Rabbi Asher and I got to be close. There just wasn't space
enough, time enough.
When I say close, it never was as close a relationship as
I had with Rabbi Fine, for example, where our families were
involved, where our children were about the same age, where we
visited each other's homes. I never had that type of relation
ship with Rabbi Asher. We did have a good personal relationship,
and we managed maybe every three months to have a breakfast or
lunch or late afternoon meeting just to shmoos and exchange ideas.
In addition to which, he's active to some extent in the Jewish
Welfare Federation and other Jewish community organizations in
which I was involved.
So I've seen him both as a congregant and as a colleague, a
colleague in the sense that on the Sunday morning religious
school program he and I have been co-teachers of the confirmation
class for six years. Basically, he would teach the whole class
or half the class the first hour, with his assistant rabbi
teaching the other half of the class the first hour. Then, the
second hour, the whole class would be divided into maybe four
or five parts, and the children would have their choice of
teachers, myself and others. But with that choice rotating
during the year, they all got a choice of maybe three or four
of us.
I disagreed with that format because I was very jealous of
my time. I was used to, for example, being in a situation when
I first started teaching confirmation classes at Emanu-El in
1946 of having two hours for myself with one class the whole
year. The rabbis taught the children during the week after
school.
But, of course, the children and their parents liked the idea
of eliminating the midweek programs, which meant that the children
got less of a lay teacher or no lay teacher at all. So if I
wanted to teach, which I did, I had to go along with this system,
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Kuhn: although I did not and do not agree with it. I feel I have as
much to teach in my way as the rabbi, and I think the major lack
of this system is that we don't require more, that we've given
up that midweek system.
One way to do it, of course, is to have a longer session for
confirmands on Sunday. Well, we've spoiled the children and their
parents by reducing our standards.
But, be that as it may, I came to form certain conclusions
about him — that he's a very articulate man, a learned man, but
sometimes a harassed man, harassed to the point where it would
affect, I think, his effectiveness as a teacher of children.
Sometimes I would even hold him by the shoulders and tell him
that, that if he was really bothered by something beyond the
Sunday school class then he shouldn't be teaching that day.
There are many harassments for which his feeling that way
would be perfectly justified. Being rabbi of Temple Emanu-El
is not an easy thing. It isn't just what appears in the bulletin.
People calling all the time want a part of him, want him to change
his vote on something, or his views, or to preach a sermon. What
ever it may be, it's amazing. We might say, "Well, we would never
do a thing like that," but there are congregants who feel the
rabbi should jump to their tune.
This has always been true, and Temple Emanu-El, as I have
indicated before, is no better or no worse just because it happens
to be architecturally superb. It's no better or no worse ethically
or morally than any other institution of human beings.
Rabbi Alvin I. Fine, 1948-1964
Kuhn: So he has his problems. I recall when Rabbi Fine was there, his
speaking to the men's club one night on the subject, generally,
of "a day in a rabbi's life," pointing out all the varieties of
tsuris you can have during just one day. You have funerals, and
you have to think of a position about war, nuclear energy — whatever
it might be, everything is stacking up on you. One of the members,
Joe Tonkin, got up and said, "You know, Rabbi, for your headaches
I don't take aspirin." [Chuckles] So each rabbi has to take his
own aspirin. But that's true even if you're not a rabbi.
Apart from that, in this school, I think, the confirmation
class has been run quite well, particularly because Rabbi Asher's
years here have coincided with the summer experience in Israel. We
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Kuhn: often say Emanu-El or the western Jewish communities are twenty
years behind the East. In this case, we were co-equal with the
East as far as starting the program, and the percentage of children
who participate in the seven-week summer experience is higher here
than anywhere else in America. Of the approximately seventy
children in this year's confirmation class, forty-seven went to
Israel and just returned Tuesday night.
A large part of this is due to Rabbi Asher's enthusiasm, to
the original impetus given by Rabbi Lurie's drive to initiate the
program, and by all assistant rabbis since Rabbi Lurie left, and
by the Federation's support. It's been a great success. It's
been a great way for keeping children involved in the religious
school, knowing that when they were confirmed they had this to
look forward to, at no cost to themselves or their family if they
couldn't afford it. So it is a very democratically conceived
idea. Now, that's as far as the religious school is concerned.
Then I see Rabbi Asher, of course, as the rabbi in the congre
gation, as my pastor, as the rabbi I listen to on the high holidays
or whenever else I happen to choose to go to services, or to
funerals, or to weddings, and here I don't compare him to other
men because the circumstances are different. I'm older. His
performances I don't measure against Louis Newman's, because I'm
different now as a mature adult than I was as a child. I don't
even compare him to other rabbis in the community now. In fact, I
try not to compare him at all. What I do is try to absorb whatever
message he has and to like him and see what is really his message
at this time.
It's a difficult thing for a rabbi, who week after week (and
this is true of all congregations, not just Emanu-El and not just
the reform) spends so much time and effort coming up with a theme
for that Saturday's sermon, knowing that percentage-wise a mere
handful of his congregants are there to hear him. I'm sure this
must bother Rabbi Asher as it does every other rabbi.
Yes, we have a good relationship. I love his sense of humor,
and as a pastor he's very eager to call on families who need his
help, very easy to get to, not ever the possibility of getting the
feeling that he's too busy to answer your call. He's there at the
crack of dawn in the morning. If you want to have breakfast with
him, all you have to do is be up — .
[end tape 5, side B; begin tape 6, side A]
Kuhn: Now, I could talk more about Rabbi Asher. On any particular issue,
for example, I might agree or disagree with him. Jewishly, he
obviously would be better informed than I. But I have not found
127
Kuhn: too many instances where he and I would disagree all that much.
There are people, of course, who don't agree with his views as
expressed in his high holiday sermons, the so-called two-days-a-
year Jews who think he should come out with a new line every year
as if it were a model of cars instead of Judaism, the ancient
faith. But people are paying substantial dues to belong to the
congregation and I guess they feel that that entitles them to any
kind of criticism they want to make.
He's a good rabbi, an honorable man, and I hope he's with us a
long, long time. We certainly have had enough change. I think
it's a great source of gratification to him that in the year in
which he received his honorary doctorate from the Hebrew Union
College- Jewish Institute of Religion, his own son was ordained by
the same institution, as the seventh in an unbroken line of rabbis,
A great thing.
Dorfman: It certainly is. Do you think there is one particular area from
which the harassments stem?
Kuhn: Harassments? I think, first of all, his calendar is very, very
crowded. He might have on Sunday, normally, a confirmation class.
He might have a Christian group having a tour of the Temple. He
might be meeting a couple about to be married, and he might have
a wedding or two, a funeral, then some social engagements. He's
a very social man. He and his wife Faye are very desirable dinner
partners at many functions. They like to be there, they like to
be invited, but it's a very, very busy life. I think it just sort
of stacks up on him, plus the fact he is a nonstop smoker.
I don't know. I just have the feeling that when he became
super critical of certain behavior of fifteen-year-old confirmands,
who are really basically still children, that was not really his
intent. His intent was to be critical, but if he wasn't doing it
in a constructive light, I felt I had an obligation to call to his
attention the impropriety of the way he was speaking to them.
I would want someone to call it to my attention if I were doing
the same. I looked upon it as equal colleagues, different train
ings, different backgrounds, different experiences, but nonetheless
a team. I think you have to have that, particularly, for a confir
mation class.
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VII MEETING THE NEEDS OF THE JEWISH COMMUNITY
Temple Affiliation of Paramount Importance in Jewish Life
Dorfman: Have there been difficulties in meeting the needs of the unaffil-
iated?
Kuhn: The unaffiliated consist of a variety of types of people. There
are those who have never been affiliated. There are people who
have been members and resigned, people who intend to be affiliated
when their children become old enough, people who don't think they
can afford it any more, people who have quit over some disappoint
ment — perhaps they were looking for a disappointment. While there
may be some stereotypes included in there, none of these people
are going to join unless they've been asked personally by somebody,
perhaps even in a semi-social way.
In this current issue of American Heritage, it makes the state
ment that America is still a religious nation, perhaps largely due
to the fact that we have the choice to be religious or nonreligious ,
I think this is true. We look upon the ones who don't belong some
times as not having got the message yet, or backsliders, or people
trying to get a free ride, maybe get free high holiday seats,
whatever.
I don't really know who among my friends belong to Emanu-El or
not. I may see them at a high holiday service, but I don't know
whether they are guests of somebody. If I did, I'd forget who it
was by next year, unless they happen to be parents of one of my
children's chums, and I really know they do belong to the Temple.
There are some families; I am positive I know who they are. But
there are some I'm not sure and I don't really care. I couldn't
recite for you the membership roster of Temple Emanu-El.
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Kuhn: It's too bad that we have this feeling that the synagogue
exists to be supported as we see fit. We should have somehow
had instilled in us some sense of obligation from our religious
school days to this institution, which is of paramount importance
in Jewish life. It has to be supported. That's our obligation.
We don't have to go if we don't want to, or if we want to go we
don't have to listen, or if we listen we don't have to agree, but
it must be supported, because everybody expects the rabbi to be
there in case of joy or sorrow. How can he be there only then
and not the rest of the time? Nonetheless, the congregations have
disagreed more than agreed when it comes to what to do.
I think it's almost like saying, "If we can get someone away
from being a nudist, I don't care whether he buys his clothes at
Roos-Atkins or the Emporium. He buys them at one store; maybe
the next time he'll buy them from the other store." And this is
the case of someone joining the synagogue. I don't really care
which one he joins, how he interprets his Judaism.
Part of it is due to the extreme mobility of American life.
Twenty-three percent of the people moving every year, and the lack
of roots, and the fact that they say, "Why join a temple? Your
father's going to be transferred again next year. You make a
bunch of friends and then you're going to lose them all." I can
understand that, not as well as if it had ever happened to me.
It's too bad because only about thirty percent of our Jews in
this area are affiliated. There's never been really a major drive
successfully to change it.
Emanu-El used to put on the seats at high holidays releases
from the Union of American Hebrew Congregations. One of them was
an extremely effective piece called "Tumbleweed" that [said that]
without roots our lives are like a tumbleweed. They just roll
across the prairie with no evidence of permanence or stability
at all, a very apt parallel.
Now, if you were to come out here from the East, a family, say,
whose children have grown, and you're to settle in San Francisco,
a fair percentage of these people would join Temple Emanu-El if
they were from a reform background, because it is, I think you
know, the leading reform synagogue. I don't say in any sense
that it is necessarily superior to Sherith Israel, or Beth Israel-
Judea, or to the conservative, or to the orthodox, not at all.
I'm saying that if you're looking around for a place that has
a reputation, you would select Emanu-El on that basis. These
newcomers don't know anybody. They move into a nice apartment.
They have the means, but someone has to integrate them. There
130
Kuhn: have been numerous cases where people have joined, paid their dues
for several years, and then left because no one during that period
of time made any effort personally to have them invited for dinner,
or an evening, or to be picked up by someone for services — nothing.
It's a tough thing to involve people, but that's what hospitality
is all about. You just can't expect the dues statements to take the
place of that. I worked on the Temple membership committee one time
on retention, dealing with people's communications who had written
to say they had resigned, and by that time it was too late. "Now
that you've resigned, we want to know what you didn't like or what
we should have done that you would have liked." "Yes, but why
didn't you ask us while we were there?" It's a question almost
like, "Have you stopped beating your wife?"
Dorfman: What was Rabbi Asher's role when this happened?
Kuhn: Well, these people certainly — I'm again using a stereotype. These
people certainly would have heard him on one of the holidays and
they might have liked what he said or not. They might have liked
what he said, but not the way he said it. They may or may not have
come back again. They may never have had an opportunity to meet
him face to face, because there was no occasion of joy or sorrow in
their family.
It's not a congregation in which the rabbi, just by a simple
check list, can say, "I'm going to meet five of my members this
week," because the five he's going to meet this week are going to
have a personal and immediate need for his services. For the rabbi
just to call someone and say, "We've never met. There's really no
need to meet, but I'd like to talk with you and see if you're a
Giants or a A9ers fan," that just doesn't exist. They're all too
busy. They really are. The rabbi is preparing a book review for
the Sisterhood, or his speech for the men's club, the campus group,
or someone else.
So, therefore, this thing breaks down, and the family says to
him, "Look, we were in Chicago. We belonged to our synagogue for
thirty years. The rabbi bar mitzvahed me, and he confirmed my
wife, and buried my father, and how come it's not like that here?"
That's because life isn't the same. It's nobody's fault particu
larly. It's everybody's fault generally. But because it's no
particular person's fault, there's no one to pin the error on.
Unless you have a congregation that's tremendously committed to
these nuances, to a situation that the board of directors analyzes,
and every time they come across a name on the roster that none of
them recognize, that sends up a flare. Someone always has to know
him.
131
Kuhn: Now, Rabbi Asher, to his credit, does have evenings in his
home for new members frequently. What comes out of them, 1
don't know. I don't even know if my figures are correct in
figuring out the resignation rate is at a dangerous level. I
don't know that because I don't know at what point in their
membership longevity people are dropping out. It may not be
the new ones at all. I just don't know. All I know is that
the Temple periodically conceives of itself as having a severe
financial problem due to the fact that the membership level has
dropped.
Part of it is because the general Jewish population of San
Francisco has dropped. Part of it is because a substantial pro
portion of what's left is superannuated, including people who can
no longer afford to pay dues. This is a problem the congregation
has to evaluate, as to whether or not to make some kind of a
concession which is less than charity to these older members.
And the rabbi does his share, and I'm sure that when people go to
his home it's a very impressive evening. But this is something
which has to be watered continuously.
It's not just in the congregational life; it's in every kind
of Jewish and organizational life. How do you get someone who
is not a self-starter himself, who is in the middle or the latter
part of his life — how do you get him to feel at home and wanted
and warm? How do you take the initiative all the time without
knowing whether it will ever be reciprocated?
Those are tough questions and it's not like saying, "All we
want is your dues, because we have to have large numbers to appear
in Sacramento or Washington." This is not the same thing. We
need your dues because we're trying to support the concept of
organization based on the commonalities of our faith." People
look at that as an imperative with far different values today
than they did before.
You have all sorts of studies as to how the growth rate of
American Jewish institutions rose after World War II, particularly
in the suburbs. It's slowed down. It's slowed down. Certainly
the inner city synagogue has had certain problems which the sub
urban ones don't have. They all have financial problems.
But, again, you have financial problems only if you consider
your temple dues as some kind of a burden. The mere fact that
the dues are tax deductible from income tax doesn't make the
temple a charity. My synagogue is not a charity. It's where
1,200 other families and I decided together that we're going to
support something which none of us could do by ourselves. It's
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Kuhn: not a charity in any sense, except to the extent maybe that we
make those services available to families who can't afford the
same thing. It's something I do for myself. It's not done only
for the poor or anything like that.
We've gotten away easily because we don't have this 4 percent
sales tax that most European countries assess their citizens to
support their religious institutions. Here you're free to do it
or not to do it. I'm saying we're better off if we do it. Again,
it's still a free country. I don't say that belonging to a syna
gogue automatically makes you a good Jew. I don't know that. But
I'm saying that there are other ways people conceive of their
Judaism. Some belong to the Center. Some work in philanthropy.
To say that one person is better than another, or a better Jew
than another, goes back to this pervasive "we're number one"
psychology of sports teams. I don't believe that anybody can say,
"We're number one Jewishly."
Dorfman: So that you feel competition should not exist in this context?
Kuhn: I would say competition should not exist as we know competition
generally to be — "we're the biggest and we're the best." I don't
know how to measure that. I would like every child to contribute,
to bring charity money to religious school. The child who brings
ten cents is not twice as religious as the one who brings a nickel.
You have to know a lot more about the children than that. All I
know is that we could do better than we're doing. That was what
John F. Kennedy said in his campaign, "I think we can do more."
And we know we can do more. It's acknowledged that the question
is: Who's going to bake the bread?
Dorfman: To go on with your association with Temple Emanu-El over the years,
what do you consider the triumphs of Temple Emanu-El?
The Triumphs and Disappointments of Temple Emanu-El
Kuhn: The triumphs of Temple Emanu-El? Well, creating a magnificent
synagogue in 1864, followed by an even more magnificent one in
1925; maintaining for 127 years religious worship services in the
congregational structures; serving the religious needs of its
members and of the Jewish community generally; and educating
children, although surprisingly that wasn't done before maybe the
first twenty-five years of synagogue life because its first rabbi,
Julius Eckman, started his own private school, the Hepzibah School.
It's a fascinating story.
133
Kuhn: I think that all the foregoing defines the Temple's private
role as a congregation. Its public role emerges when its rabbis
take public stands or exert leadership within the American Jewish
community or within the general community of San Francisco; when
its members are also leaders of their community; when, for example,
you find out that Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, and Camp Fire Girls one
year chose their presidents from the membership of Temple Emanu-El;
when some of our leading citizens in San Francisco in medicine,
law, politics, etc. are fellow Temple members. These indicate a
strength and permanence that is heartening to see.
Again, I don't think anybody was trying every year to come up
with, "Let's win. We're the number one batter for this year."
It's just what is acknowledged and felt. Now, I think there's
this to be said for it. If Temple Emanu-El did not have the
beautiful structure it has, it wouldn't be the so-called leader
by that much. But people know that there is this synagogue in
San Francisco which is an architectural marvel, particularly the
Ark of the Covenant being considered the most significant Jewish
artifact of the twentieth century, and that's the place where many
choose to go.
For example, I once belonged to the Lions Club in San Francisco.
This originally was called the host club, and when they got a lot
more members they formed a second Lions Club, so maybe there are
a dozen different clubs by now. But if you come from out of town
and you want to get your membership attendance credited , you
generally — you don't have to, but you generally look for the host
club because that's going to be located downtown in the heart of
the city, and that's where you're going to go.
This is sort of the same way. That doesn't mean any thing's
wrong with the other ones. And if a rabbi should be the spiritual
leader of another reform, conservative, or orthodox synagogue, and
he is a superman, and people flock to him to listen to his message,
regardless of the type of Judaism he's preaching — if he's that
good, he'll have an audience.
It's just that there are so many competing things nowadays and
temple attendance itself is not a success story, so it's tough to
do that. Therefore, a lot of rabbis prefer not to get involved
with the pulpit. They opt for the chaplaincy, or Hillel, or
federation work — anything, it seems, but the pulpit, because the
pulpit is nothing but a bunch of headaches. For the ones that
feel that way, I can see why they might.
Dorfman: What would you say were the disappointments in Temple Emanu-El?
134
Kuhn: The disappointments to me are those in which I share responsi
bilities, such as not being a temple attender as much as I
should. There's no excuse for that. I know enough to realize
that once I get there, I'll be glad I went. The soul needs
refreshment, that quiet inner peace. But beyond that, in some
of my disagreements about religious education, I think the
saddest thing to me is the fact that the Temple really has not
taken a liberal front-row approach on some of the social issues
of our times — the Temple saying, "We stand for this."
Sometimes a rabbi will make a statement and have to qualify
it by saying, "I don't speak for my congregants; I speak only
for myself." Well, I don't think it's so bad if a rabbi says,
"I speak for my congregants." He knows that by that statement
nobody's implying that someone took a poll of his congregants.
But he's the leader by his title, by "rabbi," by "teacher."
This is the position of Judaism as he defines it now, distilled
down the centuries.
Breira and Rabbi Joseph Asher
Kuhn: I think we haven't had enough of that, of religion speaking out
for itself. Now, admittedly, if you do that, then you're out in
front there with the position. People can shoot away at you.
If you have no position, they can't shoot away at you, but, on
the other hand, what do you stand for? I might say, "And if not
now, when?" We haven't had enough, whether it's on war, on
nuclear energy, or on Judaism.
But we may see a little change in that at Temple Emanu-El,
because Rabbi Asher has become very active in leadership in the
national movement called Breira, which means "alternatives."
It's a group of Jews, primarily, I would say, with a large
number of rabbis among their membership who feel that some of
the problems affecting Israel and its relationship to America
and the other portions of the diaspora have to be re-examined
very critically. Some people have taken this to mean that their
stance would be anti-Israel, not quite in the same way, however,
as the old American Council for Judaism.
Now it appears that some of the leading figures in Breira come
to this movement with records of questionable performance in the
peace and free speech movements of the '60s.
Should Rabbi Asher speak on Breira on high holiday services,
it could be somewhat inflammatory, not that I'm saying I hope he
doesn't preach on it. A little inflammation could be good for us.
135
Kuhn: You read about this movement in some of the Jewish periodicals,
and there's no question that Rabbi Asher is taking a leadership
role nationally. Whether he anticipated that some of his congre
gants would not agree with him or not, I don't know, but there
has been a certain amount of talk that he might have used poor
j udgment .
Dorfman: In affiliating with this group?
Kuhn: That's right, that's right. So there's always something. The
argument against it, of course, is, "Who needs this organization?
While Israel is still fighting for its life with the Arabs and
contending with a new American administration, these should cause
all of us to devote our attention to Israel, who needs all our
support at this time and no divisiveness."
Their argument on Breira's side would be, "Well, you've been
giving us that line for twenty-nine years now. Finally Mr. Begin
gets in. But if we give you all this money through the United
Jewish Appeal, we should have certain say in priorities of Israel,
and social work, and what percentage of the national product goes
into the armed forces, and so on."
I doubt that I, as an American citizen, have any right to
interfere with the internal affairs of Israel. Breira's argument
is, "Here we talk about a unified Jewry throughout the world and
we're really not sticking our noses into each other's businesses.
We're sticking our noses into our own business."
But it will have to work out as to where the arena of differences
is going to be played. I think Breira is in a difficult position
to begin with, because some of the non-rabbinic people have been
literally beyond the pale in some of the other things on which
they've built their previous reputations.
Dorfman: Such as the activities you mentioned in the '60s?
Kuhn: That's right, that's right. The way they used truth and falsehood
interchangeably. The way they — a rabbi might say something and
the next day he'll find his name on the letterhead of an organiza
tion to which he had no intention of ever giving public support.
These are the sort of things that will — it will have to clean up
its own house if it's going to be taken seriously.
For example, I read an article in one of the magazines last
month in which they said that one of the things about Breira was
its recommendation that each of us take more charge of our
philanthropic distributions. That because the amount of money
that American Jews had raised for charity in the last few years
136
Kuhn: has dropped, generally because of business conditions, maybe this
is an indication that people are doing this. They're deciding
where the money is going to go.
Well, this is a completely false reading of what's happened,
because they're comparing the year '73- '74, which was a war year,
the Yom Kippur war in Israel, with '75 and '76, which were drop
off years as any postwar campaign year is, and this is the explana
tion for it. So I'm saying that you have to watch very carefully
as to what's being said and if it's a proper interpretation.
Dorfman: Yes, as you said, this should be very interesting if this comes
from the pulpit.
Kuhn: Right.
Dorfman: Do you think there's a likelihood that it might?
Kuhn: Well, if he's announced the fact that he's one of their national
leaders. And at some point he'll have to state his views, and the
most logical time would be on the high holidays when there is a
full congregation.
The Significant Contributions of Congregational Leaders
Dorfman: Of the leaders of the congregation whom you have known, are there
one or more of those leaders who have made most significant con
tributions?
Kuhn: Do you mean to the congregation?
Dorfman: To the congregation, yes.
Kuhn: Well, Harold Zellerbach had the toughest task. For five of his
six years as president of the congregation in the late '40s, he
had to deal with the Irving Reichert problem. He seemed to treat
it almost like a business problem, in that the membership of the
Temple was dropping. He brought in his own public relations
consultant, Gene K. Walker, and they made a public relations study
that pointed to the fact that regardless of anything else that may
have been wrong with the congregation, Irving Reichert primarily
had to be the focus. Now, I can't think of any problem since then
of any kind of magnitude that faced any of the recent presidents.
137
Kuhn: Every five years there would be a fund-raising drive generally
tied into the 100th or 105th or 110th, whatever it might be,
anniversary. More and more, the president of the congregation is
a person of my own age. The present president, Myer Kahn, and his
predecessor, Raymond Marks —
[end tape 6, side A; begin tape 6, side B]
Kuhn: Those two men were classmates of mine in religious school. We were
confirmed together. I look at them and others like them, and they're
all pretty much cut from the same cloth, with this exception. Very
few of them, if any, now represent families of wealth. Men have
not passed along the presidency of Temple Emanu-El as a gift to
their children. In fact, the opposite might even be true, that the
president's son is maybe less likely to be a future leader in the
congregation.
You have people who have made contributions along specific tech
nical lines of building to improve the Temple, or who have done
legal work, or women who have been responsible for Sisterhood's
activities or for floral decorations. But I can't see any of them
who come to the top of my mind as having given anything really
outstanding, other than Harold Zellerbach.
Now, before Rabbi Fine left he started this program, the Emanu-El
Institute for Adult Studies, which was a twice-a-year program of
adult courses. I'm sure there's been a tremendous amount of work
put into it, but I can't conceive of that as being anything of a
heart-wrenching nature like terminating Irving Reichert's contract
must have been, and the fact that this adult studies program is
still succeeding, I think, is to the credit of Rabbi Asher. It's
a great program.
Dorfman: The program for adult studies?
Kuhn : Right .
Dorfman: What unique qualities did you think Harold Zellerbach possessed?
Kuhn: Toughness. Tough. For a man to organize literally a campaign to
determine what was really wrong with this organization and to deal
with the answers he found, organizing the way it could be resolved
by having the two sides confront each other with a court reporter
present in this famed Sunday meeting in November or December, 1947 —
this takes a man with lots of guts, guts being the number one
ingredient we ain't got enough of in this world. That's what gave
him success in business. I wouldn't want to be on the opposite
side of the table from him.
138
Kuhn: He told me at a meeting in his office Thanksgiving morning of
that year when we were going over Irving Reichert's shortcomings
as an educator — Harold Zellerbach said, "I don't give in to any
man, particularly Irving Reichert, when it comes to relative brain
capacity."
Dorfman: Last week you told of your experience with the men's club, and at
that time you indicated that there had been other incidents.
Would you please tell me about them? [Tape interruption] We can
come back to that question at a later time.
Kuhn: All right.
Temple Emanu-El and the Future
Dorfman: Looking ahead, say for the next ten years, what do you see for
Temple Emanu-El?
Kuhn: I see it about the same. If Rabbi Asher's health continues, he
should continue to serve. Each two or three years we'll have a
new assistant whom he will pick from the graduating class of the
Hebrew Union College, and all the men he's picked so far have
been topnotch in future promise. The school will go on under Dr.
Portnoy's direction through the ninth grade. The rabbi and his
assistant rabbi run the class in the confirmation and high school
class years.
I think this Temple will go right along. It will have its
periodic financial crises. It will have Breira or something else
to create controversy. People will be born, become bar mitzvah,
will be confirmed, go to Israel, will marry and have children
and send them to our school, and die. Nothing much different is
going to happen, except as Emanu-El 's reflection of what happens
in American and American Jewish life and world Jewish life. I
just can't conceive of anything because the Temple is like a rock.
It's built up there of mighty stone and, you think, this is
permanence. Nothing is quite that permanent, but it's certainly
more permanent than anything else we have. That's the feeling
we want our kids to have of the Temple, that it's a permanent
institution.
Dorfman: Are there any additional changes you might look for?
Kuhn: Oh, well, things are going to come along that will surprise you,
that you're going to say, "My gosh." Well, let me give you an
example. There's talk now of the reform movement being the latest
139
Kuhn: of the Jewish sects to come along with sponsorship of Hebrew day
schools. Even Louis Newman's temple in New York announced that
finally they were ready to go with their new $2 million, five-day-
a-week school.
Louis Newman told me before he died that this was happening,
but he also qualified it by saying that it's an inner city type
of thing. These parents don't want their kids going to school
with blacks or Puerto Ricans. They want them going to a school
where they'll learn some kind of a modern language, but there
won't be all that emphasis on Hebrew as in a traditional day
school. It will be something different.
Well, you will have to have a lot of reform day schools before
a pattern emerges. If you were to have told me twenty years ago
that the Federation would be supporting three day schools in the
year 1977, I'd have said, "You're crazy." If you were to tell me
today in 1978 that Temple Emanu-El would some day have its own
day school, I'd have to say, "Well, maybe."
Perhaps the community might even help to support it if children
who attend do not necessarily come from a family affiliated with
Emanu-El, but have a reform background. After all, you shouldn't
discriminate against the children. So you help Emanu-El educate
these children. That's a possibility because there have been
committees between the Federation and synagogues to redefine
their relationships as to whether or not the community should be
helping synagogues financially.
Then you come to the question: What is the attitude of the
unaffiliated donor toward the Federation, to which he contributes,
helping to pay some of the expenses of the synagogue, to which he
does not contribute?
Religious Education, Its Growth and Change
Kuhn: I'm sure there will be other changes. I just don't want to stick
my neck out beyond that. There are changes that I would like to
make. I would like to see more than two hours a week devoted to
religious education. That seems to be a figure which congregations
have come up with as being the maximum that families will let us
have their kids — nine to eleven on Sunday morning, apart from the
weekends, when they may go to Camp Swig or something like that.
Now maybe the fact that in confirmation year we get the children
for seven weeks full-time to go to Israel makes the norm more
than two hours per week.
140
Kuhn: There are some little things about Emanu-El that really irk me
in a sense because I feel they are symbolic. For example, we
haven't had, for a year now, a librarian, which means we have no
library. We have a room called a library and people can return
books to it. They can borrow books without signing out for them
because there's nobody there to check them out, but you in no
sense can have a library program without a librarian. Well, here
the Temple is trying to save money on this.
Now, a university couldn't get away with that. The moment you
said, "We don't have a library," you'd say, "Well, you're through."
It should be required for a school to be accredited by the Union
of American Hebrew Congregations — you have to have a library that
meets certain standards. I may or may not be a voice in the
wilderness. I'm certainly a dim voice. No one's paid any atten
tion to it yet.
These are some of the things that if there's a continual crunch
financially — these are the kind of decisions you make: What can we
give up? What the fewest people scream about? Well, most people
in the congregation have never been to the library, so they're not
going to scream about that.
I'm reminded of the TV series, "Success Story," which Richfield
Oil Company sponsored some twenty years ago. One week the video
camera would tour an oil refinery. The next week, for example,
the focus might be on the Camp Fire Girls. The following week
you'd see another industrial process, and the week after you'd
visit with the Boy Scouts. The program would thus alternate
between profit and nonprofit organizations.
One time they showed the new campus at San Francisco State
University, and I wrote them a letter and said, "It was a beautiful
program, but you didn't show any shots of the library." They wrote
back and said, "We're sorry, but the library isn't photogenic,"
which I thought was a ridiculous kind of statement for an educa
tional institution to be concerned with.
If the library, which is the repository of books, isn't in the
home of Judaism, where is it? These are the types of things that
worry me, the fact that nobody is standing up at the annual meeting
and screaming about them. Maybe I'll go to the next annual meeting
and scream about them, and maybe I won't.
Dorfman: Can we return to the growth of temple-supported day schools? What
changes do you think the growth of those day schools will bring?
141
Kuhn: The children who are going to Hebrew day schools come from a variety
of backgrounds. I'll only discuss the two in San Francisco. There's
a third one in the South Peninsula. One of those in San Francisco
is the oldest, the Brandeis Day School. Many of its parents come
from reform families who want a private education for their children,
small classes, individual attention, and a modern foreign language,
and they want it in a safe environment. But Brandeis has not been
a roaring success, in spite of these seemingly faultless criteria.
On the other hand, you have the Hebrew Academy, which still has
many children from a reform background but has more proportionally,
I think, from a traditional background. It also has a large number,
perhaps a great majority, of the children of the new Russian emigres
who they specialize in going after. They give them the Jewish back
ground that the kids could not get in the Soviet Union. In spite
of the controversy surrounding its director, Rabbi Pinchas Lipner,
it's succeeding educationally in every other way, tremendously.
Now, what effects these will have on the congregation to which
these parents do or do not belong, or to which they would otherwise
belong, I don't know. I'm sure many parents wouldn't otherwise
belong to congregations, because they themselves feel no need for
Judaism. They want it educationally for their children, which has
good and bad — plenty of bad — if you want only something for your
child. But it's certainly something we never anticipated on this
scale in this community.
You might even find several reform congregations joining together
to sponsor a day school, just like they sponsor, together with the
Bureau of Jewish Education, the Ben Yehuda School for the afternoon
Hebrew program. Well, it might make sense to have a unified approach
toward Hebrew day schools for the children of reform families. I
don't know. I think there's enough money within the community that
anything the community wants that badly, it can get. The point is,
does it know what it wants, and how does it assess how badly it
wants it?
Incidentally, when these children graduate from the day school at
the elementary level and are reaching the age of junior and senior
high school, then you come into an entirely different kind of finance
thing. You just cannot use whatever space happens to be surplus
during the week for some congregation. You're running into labs
then and a lot of other expensive programs.
This is one of the reasons I'm sure that Rabbi Lipner has brought
Dr. Edward Teller into the program as scientific consultant to the
Hebrew Academy, because of his prestige and his obvious leadership
as one of the world's great Jewish scientists, even if you don't
agree with his politics.
142
VIII IN RETROSPECT
Chaim Weizmann at the Hotel St. Francis, 1937
Dorfman: I wanted to go back to an experience you mentioned; that is, hearing
Chaim Weizmann speak in 1937. What can you remember about that?
Kuhn: Well, as I remember it, that was about the time I was working for
the Anglo-California National Bank, and Weizmann 's appearance here
was announced, and, for whatever reason, I went to hear him. It
was at the Hotel St. Francis, a crowded room. He was tremendously
impressive in person, in appearance, speaking, and he made this
statement. (It's rare that you remember what someone said who
spoke to you forty years ago.) He said, "This is what we hope to
to. This is what the Zionists hope to do: develop Palestine. And
if you believe that you want to help us, we welcome your assistance,
but if you can't go along with us, please do not oppose us. Step
to one side and let us do what we have to do."
Of course, in San Francisco, particularly, we didn't take that
message to heart because many did try to oppose him. I have tried,
unsuccessfully so far, to locate the item in the forerunner of the
Jewish Bulletin which would have described that meeting to see how
my memory compares with what he actually said. But that's what I
remember that he said. I'm very glad I went because I later read
his book, Trial and Error, and when he described his periodic visits
across the United States to raise money for the Zionist movement,
he said, "The further west you went, the less Judaism there was,
and when you got to San Francisco it was almost all gone."
Dorfman: And the organization that was most effective in opposing Chaim
Weizmann?
Kuhn: That was the American Council for Judaism. It wasn't at that time.
It was, I'd say, in the beginning of the early '40s, certainly by
Yom Kippur, 1943, which was the date of Irving Reichert's famous
sermon to Emanu-El that you had to choose between his position and
the Zionist position.
143
Dorfman: Not at that time, not at that particular meeting?
Kuhn : No , no .
Dorfman: Was there another organization that actively opposed Weizmann at
that time?
Kuhn: I'm sure there was more than one, but they were mostly small things,
ineffective things. There wasn't anything to oppose or not oppose.
We didn't have much effect on Great Britain. They were the ones
who controlled immigration to Palestine, who issued the White Paper.
We could protest, but to whom? We had Franklin Roosevelt, whose
support of the Jewish cause, as we find now, was completely equivocal,
all talk and no performance. In spite of the fact that he surrounded
himself with many Jewish advisers, high-ranking in his administra
tions, he was no great friend of the Jews.
If you read Earl Morse's While Six Million Died, you'll see how
impotent our American efforts were to save our people during the
early stages of the Hitler period. You couldn't count on the
national administration. So, therefore, whom else could you count
on? There was no one else.
Issues Within the Jewish Community, 1937-1978
Dorfman: Can you tell me what the issues were within the Jewish community up
until 1937?
Kuhn: Well, certainly Palestine was an issue. How effectively the commun
ity could deal with it, however, was dependent upon whether you felt
that the Jews' support of Franklin Roosevelt was about all we could
do.
Now, you have to realize that I was very young in 1937, and my
efforts mainly were trying to raise money for my fellow Jews overseas,
because there was still poverty in Poland, in Russia, in all these
countries which we think of now as backward places behind the Iron
Curtain. Well, there was no Iron Curtain, but there was still the
poverty there, and various Jewish groups would go over there and do
the best they could.
We didn't have any great overall program because we never envi
sioned extermination as being the ultimate end of most of these
people. And we didn't have any means of bringing them into America
by any instant program without that kind of a threat, even with
that kind of a threat. So, there were efforts made periodically to
bring them in, mostly from Germany. Not from other countries.
144
Kuhn: Soviet Russia, of course, was a big question mark then, not just
for its foreign policy but for its domestic policies. There were
friends of my mother who visited Russia and came back, and we had
an evening for them at which they discussed the Five Year Plan.
Well, they wouldn't let me in the room to hear these guests, as if
this was something that a child should be protected from. This was
one of the problems you had, not letting kids (I say "kids"; I'm
talking about young people) share these problems. I still cannot
to this day understand what they were trying to protect us from.
I remember going over to this friend of my mother's over here
on Cornwall Street and borrowing her samovar. They had an authentic
Russian tea at this meeting to discuss Soviet Russia on behalf of
these two physicians who had just come back from a tour. It was
okay for me to carry the samovar back and forth, but not for me to
hear the discussion.
I would say that there may have been other issues, but looking
back upon survival, which is what we're really talking about — that
was it. Survival was always on the Jewish agenda. You always have
the internal survival issues — intermarriage, assimilation, freedom
of thought, freedom to join or not to join. These we will have
with us forever. But on the gut things, which is overseas, Great
Britain was in the driver's seat. America could have been, but
chose to abdicate its responsibility and left us out in left field
thinking we were doing something, when, in fact, we weren't doing
anything.
Dorfman: how would you describe the issues from that time?
Kuhn: Since that time you've had the battle with the American Council for
Judaism. You've had the efforts on behalf of all forms of American
Jewish life, except the Council, in dealing with its own government
to support Israel financially, diplomatically, and every other single
way — in the United Nations, etc. — and therefore, the primary interests
have been diplomatic and political and philanthropic.
There also has been a tremendous growth in religious affiliation,
beginning at the end of World War II; and the growth of suburbia;
and the decline of religious institutions within the inner city,
meaning that either a synagogue moved somewhere else, or ceased
functioning, or merged, or something like that.
If you were to read, for example, the index pages, the table of
contents, of every edition of every major Jewish publication since
'40 until now, I'm sure there would be issues that occurred again
and again and again. But what really was in people's minds was how
Jewish are we, what does it mean to us, what are we doing for our
selves and our kids, and how guilty should we be about this? And,
primarily, what are we doing for our brethren overseas?
145
Kuhn: The greatest motivation for people would be to take a trip over
seas, whether it was behind the Iron Curtain or to Israel, to see
for themselves, because when they see for themselves, particularly
if they are visiting a country where they have some mishpochah,
then you've got them. They no longer can hide behind ignorance.
You take them to a place where they can visit a concentration camp
or see the survivors of a concentration camp, or go see an old
people's home in Israel when they had just visited one six months
before in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Then the parallelisms begin, and
the confusion between what is illusion and what is reality.
So there have been, I think, tremendous changes, tremendous
changes in Jewish life. The whole day school movement has come
along in that period of time — not so much change in other forms
of education, but in day schools. Then you've got Brandeis Uni
versity, a Jewish-sponsored university. You've got hundreds of
universities in America that have Jewish scholars in residence.
I want that to be categorized separately. When I said there hasn't
been too much change in Jewish education, I mean within the elemen
tary ranks except for the day schools.
But when you have increasing activity at college level, and you
have kids in high school who can take Hebrew and get credit not
only for the language requirement in high school but for college
admission, and who can study further in Israel — they can take
courses in theology, in Jewish history at the college level, for
credit, and have a major or minor in religious studies. These
are all tremendous steps forward in the acceptance of Jewish life.
The role of the Jewish academic — whenever you go to a campus
where 8 percent of the students are Jewish and 35 percent of the
faculty is Jewish, it makes you want to know how Jewish are those
faculty, other than just nominally Jewish. You find out generally
with a great disappointment that those faculty members couldn't
care less about it, except that that changes too, because the world
situation makes them change.
So it's generally much more dynamic and dramatic than trying to
answer a question that hits you right in the face. If you sat down
and said, "I'm not going to answer this question. I want to read
these article titles first. These are dramatic things." Particularly
the generational changes where your grandparents were one thing, and
your parents rebuilt from that, and then the grandchildren rebuilt
from the parents' position. Modern Jewish history is what your
parents wouldn't tell you, but what the grandchildren want to know.
That's why whenever we have young people come into the Welfare
Federation who really want to know (and they come from Canada and
from New York and from the South) , what they really want to know is
146
Kuhn: what went on in Europe, and when they go and come back it makes a
difference in their lives. It really does. It made it in my life.
I'm, by far, not the only one.
An Expansion of Values
Dorfman: How did it change your life?
Kuhn: It changed my life by really giving me, I think, a new scale of
values as to what is important. I'm going to make a little parallel
here. When I was in the Seventh Fleet in the Navy, I was in charge
of some recreation facilities, and my commanding officer was a guy
who liked a good time. He was a full captain in the Navy and he
told me once, he said, "Kuhn, in this Navy the only thing that makes
any difference is what happens on the sea, below the sea, and in
the air. Everything we do on shore here, when we have a good time
or fool around, it doesn't mean a damn. It's not really connected
to anything."
Well, what do we do in our average life? We drive on the Bayshore
Highway and we shuffle a few papers across the top of our desk, you
know, pretty perfunctory. But when we go over to Europe and North
Africa or Israel and we see Jews — the same flesh and blood — and what
they had to go through for survival, it makes the average American
Jew's everyday life seem quite humdrum.
[end tape 6, side B; begin tape 7, side A]
Kuhn: There are so many ways that I could document that: by stories from
people I've met; things I have read; things that have been told to
me by friends of mine; how people were reunited with members of their
own family; miraculous rescues; and by my friendship with my friend,
Herman Graebef a great non-Jew who saved hundreds of Jews during
World War II, one of the great ones among the "Righteous Gentiles."
So that you begin to wonder, as I said earlier: What's the truth and
what's the illusion? Whose existence is more meaningful? Where and
when does it all happen? How come I'm so lucky? Why did my parents
choose to come to San Francisco, or their parents choose it for them?
How did I get here? Who helped? How come I don't know? Where are
we? And you don't get any answers to these things. Maybe there's
a pattern, and maybe there isn't a pattern. Maybe I'll get an
answer; maybe I won't. Maybe my children will find out. Maybe
somebody left a secret diary someplace. I don't know.
You look back in your Sunday school songs. Reuben Rinder at
least taught us songs in English because the kids could understand
them. "There is a mystic tie that binds the children of the martyr
race." Big words, "the martyr race." Well, big words but true words,
San
n Fv-atr\-i nov
1Q7R n.ft.
147
Kuhn: I think of whom I've met. I've heard Weizmann. I've heard Golda
Myerson as herself and later as Golda Meir; Joe Schwartz, of the
JDC; Abba Hillel Silver; all of the prime ministers of Israel.
You figure, "This pageant, this parallel of Jewish history,
where six million people had to justify their right to want to
live, and they're my people. How could it happen?" And this is
the central — the confrontation of the holocaust is the central
problem of the moral life of our times, Jewish or non-Jewish. It's
not going to go away just because people don't study it.
So there's now a committee in San Francisco, headed by the
Jewish Community Relations Council, for the annual observance of
the holocaust. I interpret that to mean that every year there
will be courses and lectures and observance of Yom Ha Shoah. Not
necessarily a statue somewhere, but a continuous remembrance.
If you can remember Pesach and that you were a slave in Egypt,
you have to remember that you were a slave or a captive in Germany.
You have to, because there were six million of them, and this is
the only reason that Israel became a state, and people can't even
remember that. They can't remember the United Nations set up Israel
as a refuge and that Israel — why should they have to justify them
selves every two minutes?
What do they want out of us? If it were a small number of
people — but when it was six million out of eighteen million, you're
talking about pretty significant numbers. When you go through one
of these memorials, whether it's in Copenhagen or Paris or Krakow
or Jerusalem, you realize that we're in this together.
So it's a pageant of unbelievable proportions. It belongs to
all of us. We have a responsibility to know it, to feel it, and
to try to be better Jews and better human beings, because it could
happen again. We don't understand how it could happen again because
we don't understand how it could have happened in the first place.
But, having these stupendous agents of destruction, of genocide,
who could say it couldn't happen again?
Is it preferable that it happen to me as a Jew than as an American?
I don't know. So we're back to the classical confrontation in Jewish
life of the question, the unanswered and unanswerable question. But
at least it must be asked, not that we can ever find the ultimate
answer.
So, therefore, when you come back from an overseas trip and you've
kept your eyes and ears open, you've seen Jews living in caves in
the mellah or Fez, or Jews passing through a transient camp in
Vienna, or getting off a plane in Israel and kissing the ground,
148
Kuhn: you've seen something that is part of Jewish life. Where are you
going to get that in the twentieth century? On television? So
that's the kind of experience it's been, a very hit or miss summary,
but I would say that it has been utterly fascinating to me.
If I were to flesh it out with some of the true stories I could
give you, how people could just have these utterly amazing things
happen to them without any rhyme or reason — how Ernie Michell met
his sister after the war. Each thought the other was dead, and yet
they found each other, purely by accident, purely by accident.
Dorfman: Overseas?
Kuhn: Ernie came over here from Germany. His sister had been taken away
from their home in Mannheim and kept in the south of France in a
convent. Ernie started speaking here on behalf of the United Jewish
Appeal. Someone in Israel was unwrapping a Care package or the
equivalent of a Care package, and, like anybody, he always reads the
old newspapers because they're more fascinating than the new ones.
So he was reading this newspaper from Chicago and it said,
"Ernest W. Michell spoke last night on behalf of the United Jewish
Appeal." The newspaper reader said, "Don't we have a girl living
in this kibbutz who had a dead brother named Ernest Michell? So,
maybe he didn't die." So she found her brother, just by a random
little newspaper article. He thought she was dead, killed by the
Nazis, and she thought he was dead.
There are hundreds of stories, hundreds of stories like this.
You talk around the Bay Area here — there are scores of people who
are survivors of the concentration camps, and you get their stories.
Everyone's different; everyone's the same.
A man wrote me a letter last week from Pueblo, Colorado. He's a
non-Jew, a dentist, who saved hundreds of Jews in World War II and
has been acknowledged as a "Righteous Gentile" by Yad Vashem. Now
he's down on his luck; he's ill. What is our obligation to this
man? How do you measure it? Let us say he saved a hundred Jews.
Well, let's get a pencil and paper and figure out what that's worth
in today's market. I don't know. You tell me, you tell me.
Dorfman: As another human being.
Kuhn: Yes, that's right.
Dorfman: How do you evaluate human beings?
Kuhn: That's right. How do you evaluate? So first you have to evaluate
yourself maybe. I don't know.
Dorfman: Let's stop here.
149
Examining the Illusion and the Reality of Jewish Destiny
[Interview 5: November 3, 1977]
Dorfman: Can we begin again where we left off last time? You were telling
me the story of an experience with a captain under whom you served
in the Navy and drawing a parallel.
Kuhn: Yes. The parallel is that when you go overseas to see Jewish life
in Europe or North Africa or Israel or in Iran or certain countries
in South America, and you realize what these people had to go through
to get there — some of them have fought in five wars since Israel's
founding — and you come back, and you begin to wonder which is the
truth and which is illusion. What's reality?
You realize that the two weeks you spent overseas is much more
real, as far as Jewish destiny is concerned, than the fifty weeks
a year that you spend in San Francisco doing things which before
you thought were very important, but, really, compared to what you
have just seen and experienced, they don't count for very much.
It's a matter of your scale of values. I think I discussed in
an earlier tape my admiration for an American Jewish author named
Charles Angoff. His most famous work is called the Polonsky Saga
and is highly autobiographical. It starts off with his being a
small boy in Russia, coming to America, and this was all going to
be in one book. But he couldn't get it into one book and he took
ten books. The eleventh will come out next spring. I'm on book
four now, and although he is perhaps fifteen years older than I am,
some of his insights and events parallel so many in my own life
that it's absolutely amazing.
He got into Harvard on a scholarship. He was living in Boston,
and it was a big experience in his life that he was looking forward
to, and it was four years of nothing. All of his expectations were
dashed. He was frustrated. None of the professors, though learned,
had any excitement manifested toward their subjects. So he spent
his time in the library and going to concerts.
He had prepared himself for nothing when he graduated, and it was
on his conscience the whole time that here his parents were sacrific
ing to put him through. His father was frequently out of work in one
of the depressions in the garment industry. David's [the protagonist
of the novels ] whole four years at Harvard were nothing but a guilty
trip because he wasn't studying anything specific or of a practical
nature. He didn't know what to study. He didn't know anyone to
talk to. He couldn't listen to his parents. He didn't feel free to
discuss it with his girl friend for fear that he would be downgraded
in her eyes as an impractical man and an unsuitable suitor.
150
Kuhn: This was true in my case when I went to college. I wanted to
change majors. Well, that was almost an admission of failure,
to change majors. You just didn't talk about it. I didn't talk
to my mother about things like that. I didn't discuss it with my
brothers or with my friends. I just kept it within myself and
this was — I don't know if it's purely a Jewish trait. I'm sure
it's a human trait.
So I came out of the University of California with a huge
ambivalence, a love-hate relationship, which is now at more of
a love stage. My hatred of the University was really a hatred
of my own attitude toward it for my not working hard enough. I
wasn't motivated when I started, so I dropped out. Then, when I
went back after three years, when I was mature, I couldn't get
the full value of it because I had to work my way through then.
That took so much out of me just to earn enough money to live on
that I really didn't enjoy it.
As one lesson I would tell anybody, when you go to college and
you can't afford it, don't go to college. Work for a couple of
years, work during summer vacations, but not while you're going
to school. You've got to have time to go to class. You've got
to have enough time to study. You've got to have enough time to
have some fun. If you work, something's got to go; either you
won't go to class, or you won't study, or you won't have any fun.
151
IX THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY
Undergraduate Student Years, 1934-1937
Dorfinan: This would seem to be a good place to return to the years that you
spent at Berkeley. Will you tell me, please, what Berkeley was
like?
Kuhn: Well, Berkeley was the biggest place I'd ever seen. I think I'd
only been on the campus twice before, once when I was a small boy
of eight taken there by my Aunt Rachael, and I just fell in love
with the place — that was in 1925 — with its beauty. Then I went to
a track meet there in 1932, the Cal-Stanford meet. I had also seen
one football game, the Army-Navy game, but basically I didn't know
the campus at all. It was a huge place, 14,000 students then, half
of what it has today, and it was so beautiful, so beautiful.
But I didn't know what I wanted to study, so I went to see the
provost, Monroe Deutsch, who had been a childhood friend of my mother,
and he said, "Well, you have good grades in everything, particularly
in mathematics and science. You had five years of mathematics in
high school. Why don't you start out in engineering?"
Well, I did, but I forgot his saying that if it didn't work out,
you can always transfer. So I was in engineering from January, '34
through December, '35. I started out great, but I really didn't have
the talent for engineering. You have to have a conceptualization of
space, of three dimensions, which I don't have.
Say a hundred of us started as freshmen. There's the attenuation
by the time you are seniors. By the time the graduates went out to
try to find a job (remembering that at that time America was in the
midst of the depression), there was a surplus of engineers. I was
in the civil engineering curriculum. Then you find out five or ten
years later how many are still actually practicing engineering.
Maybe 2 percent of the original hundred. A fantastic waste of time,
if you figure that it's all lost.
152
Kuhn: Now, there are certain things you learn which are great lessons
in life. Surveying classes are great experiences even if you never
become a surveyor or an engineer. There are techniques and ways of
doing things and disciplines to follow that you learn. If you don't
do it right, you have to repeat it, and it is a very good training
in that sense. But there was no way then of aptitude testing. That
was unheard of then.
Now, of course, it's different. It's different in the sense that
they have aptitude testing at Cal, and the students pay for it in
their student body fee, but less than 5 percent take advantage of
it, so it's not so simple.
Forsaking School, 1937
Kuhn: Then I transferred to physical education and hygiene. This was
something that I was really interested in and I thought I'd be
good at it. I was in that from January, '36 to April, '37, when
I just stopped going. I lost my motivation and I just walked out.
I didn't tell anybody, didn't petition for a leave of absence. I
used to watch the construction on the Golden Gate Bridge, and then,
when the semester was over in May, I hung around the mailbox every
day to intercept the letter from the University saying, "Your son
Marshall is no longer in good standing." My mother never really
got that letter addressed to her.
So I was out of a job. It took three months to get one. Rabbi
Reichert at Temple Emanu-El was very helpful to me. I finally became
an office boy for Herbert Fleishhacker, the president of the Anglo-
California National Bank, which I think I've described elsewhere.
In 1940 — my mother has passed away in the fall of 1939 — I took a
trip to Yosemite, a hiking trip for a week with fifteen others led
by a National Park Service ranger, Ernie Payne. I got a chance to
do a tremendous amount of thinking and decided that I had to go back
and finish college and that I was just kidding myself by filling my
nights with industrial sports, playing basketball and softball and
all the other things you can do when you're young and there are
organized athletics for you.
153
Returning to Classes, 1940
Kuhn: So I came back, and I told the bank 1 was going to leave if the
University would let me back in, which they said they'd be glad
to do, on probation. I was much more mature. And I would have
to maintain a certain grade point average, which I exceeded with
ease. I graduated in December of '41.
Then, by that time, in October of '41, I had signed up in the
Naval Reserve V-7 program. We weren't at war yet, so there was
no certainty that I would ever go or when I'd go. Then the war
came along in December, '41 and the Navy said, "Just relax, we'll
call you." They called me in April, '42, so I didn't finish my
first semester of graduate work in the school of education and I
never went back to finish it after the war.
All told, if you counted summer sessions, intersessions , I spent
about six years at Cal and a lot of it was a huge waste. Part of
it is unavoidable. You take a course in which you really aren't
interested or, even more, you don't have a use for it. So you
forget or you don't do the reading, or you don't review what you've
done, or the professor is not stimulating.
In fact, the best lecture I ever heard at Berkeley was by a
visiting professor from Stanford, Thomas Bailey, who talked in a
course on American civilization, on the life and times of Theodore
Roosevelt. He was sensational. I never heard anybody at Cal who
could even touch him.
But I did have an interest in education. I thought teaching was
my forte. I was in the 97th percentile in teaching aptitude in the
school of education, which is a highly selected group. So I have
done a lot of educational work since, primarily in religious schools,
although everything I've done in my life, whether I was selling
prepaid healthcare for Blue Shield or recruiting blood donors for
the Blood Bank or working at the Center or for the Federation, in a
sense was education, was teaching, was persuasion, imparting facts,
inspiration, opportunities. So I think basically I would classify
myself as a teacher.
Could I tell one funny story about Berkeley?
Dorfman: Please do.
Kuhn: Much of the time I commuted from San Francisco, and in the early
years before November, '36 — in fact, after that — there was no train
service on the bridge. The bridge was completed, but there was no
commuting on the bridge until the rails were laid for the inter-
urban trains. So you commuted from San Francisco. I lived at
ISA
Kuhn: 3rd Avenue and California Street here in the Richmond. You'd take
a streetcar to the ferries, take a ferry boat to the Oakland pier,
take a train from there, and if you were going on the Key System
you'd then transfer to a streetcar. So it was a full hour and a
half or longer if the ferry was on a fog schedule.
Now, you say, "Why don't you study on the trains going both ways?"
Well, that's not the easiest thing in the world. You're lugging all
your stuff — lunch and your books — and you're talking with friends
and enjoying yourself. In fact, on the Southern Pacific ferry boat
you're watching people try to beat the iron claw machine. So I
commuted and that was a huge waste of time. Another thing I would
recommend to anybody is to live on campus and enjoy the campus life,
get the full hours out of the library, don't be home-oriented.
One of the reasons I was home-oriented, of course, was economic,
and, two, I was very much interested in my first two years in college
in leadership positions in the Pathfinders, the Temple Emanu-El youth
group. In fact, I put in so much time on that, I could have even
flunked out. It's amazing how you can get diverted by good works
because you just can't do everything.
But just about the time I left the University in April, '37, I
was walking down the campus toward the Southern Pacific train and I
noticed on the steps of the Life Sciences Building a little bird.
It looked like it had been hurt and I scooped it up in my Daily
Californian and ran into this building, this huge emporium of science.
It was during the noon hour and every door seemed to be closed, locked,
except one. I went in there and I said, "Look, I've got an injured
bird," and they said, "Just leave it here. We'll splint it and he'll
be flying in short order." So I forgot all about it.
In 1939 I received a publication, which I have here in my hands,
from the University of California. [Reading from publication]:
"Gifts of specimens to the California Museum of Vertebrate Zoology,
June 1, 1936 to June 30, 1939." So, I'm leafing through this and I
see Fred Dale gave 306 mammals from Valhalla, Alameda, and Marin
Counties; William Jellison gave 159 mammals, three birds, ten reptiles
and amphibians, from Alaska, Washington, etc. All of a sudden I come
across this entry: "Kuhn, Marshall. One dwarf hermit thrush, Hylo-
cichla guttata nanus, from Berkeley, Alameda County."
Well, when I went back to the University in 1940, I went up to
the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology and I said, "Can I see my bird,
which you promised you would splint and he would fly away, and then
you killed him?" So they showed me this little bird in this huge
lead sheathed case and explained that he was very rare. It was the
latest in the year that any dwarf hermit thrush had ever been found
in Alameda County. They fly north and this whole flock flew north,
but my little bird had bad radar and he hit the building.
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155
Kuhn: So years went by and in 1971, after they had the big oil spill
here, I went back to take a look again. Then, about a year or two
ago, it happened to be Shavuoth and my office was closed, so I was
on campus doing some Sierra Club work with some people from the
Sierra Club at The Bancroft Library. As we walked down to my car,
we passed the Life Sciences Building. I told them this story and
I looked at them and realized they didn't believe me. I said, "Well,
wait a minute. Come in here. I'll show you this bird."
So we went into the museum, and we go to this case and the bird
isn't there, which means I really am a liar. Well, I was covered
with all sorts of embarrassment, but later that week I received a
letter from the museum saying, "The specimen was found in its proper
place fifteen minutes after you left. Ward C. Russell prepared it,
but your name is also on the label as the collector." I have here
a copy of the accession card showing that accession number 5221,
April 9, '37, department number 71162 — all these numbers. And the
tag on the little bird says, "injured on campus," explaining how he
got there. And I thought, "A lot of us are injured on campus."
So that's my dwarf hermit thrush story!
Dorfman: So the finding of the specimen helped you to regain your credibility.
Kuhn: I am now once more in good standing as an honest man. I used that
story once when I was presiding at a meeting of the California Blood
Bank System and I said, "Here before me are all you people steeped
in science, and I only wish that I had some credentials in science,
but then I think I do." And I told that story, to much hilarity.
Jewish Activities and Friends
Dorfman: While you were at Berkeley, did you participate in any Jewish
activities?
Kuhn: I went to Hillel once or twice. Hillel at that time had a bad
reputation. The girls that went there weren't very good looking.
I guess the sororities got the better ones. But the Rabbi, Max
Merritt, was an anti-Zionist and, as a matter of fact, he gave a
talk one time at Temple Emanu-El after he had come home from
Palestine, and the talk was entitled, "Palestine, Home of the Arabs."
So Hillel wasn't really a congenial atmosphere for me, and I was
commuting at the time, so I really didn't make any connection there.
There were no Jewish courses on the campus at all. Professor
Popper taught Hebrew to maybe two or three students who were pre-
rabbinical students. I chose not to join a Jewish fraternith, both
156
Kuhn: for economic and social reasons. I felt that I would lose the
friendship of the fellows I'd graduated from Lowell with who were
commuting, and 1 really was so immature I didn't know what was
happening .
I was even rushed by a non-Jewish fraternity. I had no idea
what was going on. I was only just seventeen when I started Cal
and I didn't participate in any extracurricular activities. My
Jewish connection was here in San Francisco at Temple Emanu-El.
Dorfman: Were you active in the Pathfinders at that particular time?
Kuhn: Yes, and I was its president during 1935-1936. I was continuing to
usher at Emanu-El on Saturday mornings unless I had class in Berkeley.
[Tape interruption for telephone call.]
Dorfman: So that at that particular time —
Kuhn: On campus I was nonorganization. I didn't belong to a fraternity.
I didn't live in a dormitory. When I did live there at first it
was in a boarding house, and then my last year on campus, half as
a high senior and half in graduate school, I lived in the Interna
tional House. There were a lot of Jewish students there, but there
were no organized Jewish activities.
Dorfman: Who were your friends?
Kuhn: My friends on campus?
Dorfman: Yes.
Kuhn: Well, primarily fellows I'd graduated from high school with who
continued at Berkeley, and particularly if they were in engineering
or related things. We would commute together on the ferry boats and
trains, arrange to eat lunch together.
One summer session, the summer session of '41, my closest friend
was Arthur Cerf , who is now my physician, and he was behind me in
high school about a year, but we knew each other then from the
Pathfinders. We were going to summer session then and he decided
to rebuild my swimming skills. So every day for six weeks we went
swimming in the pool. He taught me, the first few weeks, how to
really swim. I could swim very powerfully, but without any form.
So he rebuilt my swimming skills and in the second three weeks he
taught me life saving. We had just a marvelous time.
Then he and I lived on the same floor at International House that
last year. He would have been my closest friend. He was going around
with Shirley Steinan, who is now his wife, and she was an Alpha
157
Kuhn: Epsilon Phi. He would want to go see her at the sorority house,
but he wanted also to get back to I House to study. So he would
take me along with him so that I'd be like a third wheel, and
Shirley seemed to resent me very much, because my part was that
after a certain time — "Art, you have to get home and study for that
exam." [Chuckles]
Dorfman: Let's stop here.
[end tape 7, side A; begin tape 7, side B]
Kuhn: He's one of my closest friends to this day. Most of the friends
were Jewish and they were nonorganization people. Those who had
gone to high school with me and joined fraternities just had their
own priorities and agendas, and I never saw many of them again.
You couldn't serve two masters. I understood that. That was no
great disappointment.
I am just trying to think who were my friends. Arthur was the
best one, but there were others in Lowell High, and we played sports
together. We had our own intramural basketball team, the Wolves.
The team included Melvin Cohn, now a superior court judge in San
Mateo County and who for many years coached the basketball team of
Temple Beth Jacob in Redwood City; Frank Brown, now a local attorney
and uncle of Governor Jerry Brown; and John Spaulding, now a CPA on
the Peninsula.
I am indebted to John for teaching me that the person who benefits
from a charitable act is more likely to remember it than the person
who performed the act. When I was in the eighth grade in grammar
school, I fractured my left wrist. During the month that I wore a
cast, John volunteered to fold my papers for my San Francisco Call
newspaper route, and he did this before folding his own papers, and,
of course, for free. During the half time at one of the Wolves'
games in Berkeley, I recalled how much his generosity had meant to
me, not only at the time but as a memory over the years. He couldn't
remember the incident at all!
We were all San Franciscans, mostly from Lowell High. I organized
a softball team called the San Francisco Busy Bees. It was mostly
made up of people I had known in high school who went to the Univer
sity and who didn't belong to fraternities or dormitories and who
primarily still commuted, which was a very popular way of going to
college. You stayed at home; you living costs were low. The worst
thing was the time wasted in commuting, particularly before the
bridge was built.
Dorfman: Did you have any other friends who were affiliated with the organiza
tions in which you remained active over the years?
158
Kuhn: At Berkeley?
Dor f man: Yes, at Berkeley.
Kuhn: Oh, I would run into people all the time who'd say, "We were at Cal
together." Lowell Adelson, for instance. He was at Berkeley then.
There were a lot of fellows. There must be fifty or a hundred of
them in various classes, because starting Cal in '34 and finishing
in '42, I covered a large span of time even though I wasn't there
three years.
Memorable Instructors
Dorfman: We can go back to that a little later. Would you tell me, please,
who your most memorable instructors and professors were?
Kuhn: [Pauses] Well, let's see. In mathematics I was fortunate enough
to have Professor Griffith C. Evans, who was a true gentleman and
a great scholar. As a matter of fact, the mathematics department
building at the University is named in his memory, and it was under
his guidance as chairman of the department that. Cal became probably
the premier mathematics department in the world.
I had some great physics professors. Harvey White in Physics IA,
Mechanics; he was the first one to teach physics on television for
credit. All the physics professors — Professor Lenzen, Professor
Loeb, Professor Jenkins — all were very high type men.
Professor Joel Hildebrand in chemistry, who is in his nineties
now, a great Sierra Club leader. He was just fantastic. He taught
Chemistry LAB and there was nobody like him. I asked him one time
after he'd finished his oral interview for the Sierra Club — I met
him at the faculty club. I said, "How do you account for your
fantastic health in your nineties?" He said, "One, by great heredity.
All my parents and grandparents were old. Two, I have a loving wife
who ministers to my every care. And, three, I never take an elevator.
I remember when I was at Cal he used to swim a half a mile a day in
the pool.
In engineering there wouldn't be anybody memorable.
In physical education, I would say Heber Newsom, who just passed
away in his eighties. He was in charge of all of the intramural
sports. He was a man who cared so much for the individual student
when he taught basketball classes that he memorized the name of
every student. Now, some men will do that, but he had a tremendous
number of Oriental students and he knew every one of them by first
159
Kuhn: and last name — Fujiharo Nakomoto, you know. It was just unbeliev
able. It showed this man really had character. I would say that
he would be my most notable one in the field of physical education.
But there weren't many. There really weren't many.
I remember some of the things, of course, that I'd hear from
various lectures if I went to a University meeting or a night
lecture. One time we had a lecture by a professor of political
science, Mr. Davidson, at International House and I remember what
he said. Somebody asked him, "Is the essence of good citizenship
always obeying the law?" He said, "No, no one could always obey
the law. It's not within human nature. First of all, no one knows
what all the laws are. The essence of good citizenship is being
willing to accept the consequences if you break the law." That
made a big impression upon me.
There were some professors who were kindly. I had a professor
in kinesiology, Dr. Bartlett, who gave me a C in that final semester
of my undergraduate work. I didn't deserve a C at all, but she knew
that I needed a C to graduate and she also knew that I was under
tremendous strain, having signed up in the Navy, not knowing where
I was going to go, and working just to have enough money to pay my
room and board.
I had Professor Richard Aiken in Zoology 10. He's the one now
who portrays the great scientists by dressing up like them. He was
just a young teaching instructor in 1934.
The Cal faculty had a lot of great men, but I didn't become close
to any of them because I felt that with the size of the University
and their interest in research and teaching and scholarship and
writing, how could a guy like me, just another number, really take
up their time?
In the physical education department I was somewhat close to a
man named Franklin Henry, who had a Ph.D. and who did a lot of work
in measuring energy consumption and so on — scientific work in
physical education as opposed to coaching varsity sports. I wasn't
interested in varsity sports at all. I was interested in mass
participation in intramural sports.
But having left the University, when I look back on it, it's not
with respect to any particular professor or group of them. I know
that if I had taken the time or had the opportunity that some of
them could have been very helpful to me in giving me advice. But
if you had a class of a thousand, and you broke it down into fifty
sections of twenty students a week under a teaching instructor, a
teaching fellow, it wasn't going to be that personal. I was a very
great critic. I took, for example, geology. Well, if you had spent
one week in Yosemite it would have been more meaningful than a year's
study out of a textbook.
160
Kuhn: Similarly, I took a course in abnormal psychology. We took a
field trip to the Sonoma State Home in Glen Ellen. That field trip
and what I saw there meant more to me than the whole rest of the
course because I was going there with a fellow who I later found
out had a sister who was a mental defective, and I thought about
that for a long time. I thought what that trip must have meant to
him.
So I believe in what you might call confluent education — some
method to bring it all to life. I think the opportunities exist
today — I don't know if the students take advantage of them — for
public service. A student can do tutoring at San Quentin and get
some kind of recognition for credit. But in those days, with
transportation difficult, there weren't those kind of opportunities.
I wasn't interested in student government.
It was just too tough an economic thing to handle because I had
no money and I had to earn it. I had a morning [San Francisco]
Examiner paper route in San Francisco which I had someone deliver
for me, but I owned the route and I would help on Sunday morning.
I was working from eight to nine every morning in the men's gymnasium
doing clerical work. I refereed a few basketball games. In fact,
on Saturday nights for twelve weeks I refereed three games a night
by myself at the Berkeley YMCA for one dollar per game. I taught
Sunday school on Sunday morning and ran the gym program at Temple
Emanu-El. Then, after that, I would come home and collapse. I did
some ushering at theaters, all sorts of things.
It was really such a physical strain that I cannot say too
strongly that no one should try it. You cannot get the value out
of a university education under such circumstances — I don't care
who you are. I'm not talking about working your way through college
with a job that allows some freedom, but if you start combining jobs,
it just won't work.
Dorfman: You said that your beginning as an engineering major was not the
direction that you should have taken and that when you returned,
you returned as an education major.
Kuhn: Right.
Dorfman: What helped you to make that decision?
Kuhn: During the time I was in engineering, realizing my grades — even when
I made an effort, I just didn't show any aptitude. It's not merely
an intellectual thing. It requires a perceptual and conceptual
ability.
161
Kuhn: Let me give you an example. There was a course called Mechanics
2. Now, this is a means of doing mechanical drawing on a three-
dimensional basis. Let us say, you have a tunnel in a mine that's
going in one direction. Half a mile away is another tunnel going
in a completely different direction. Now, you have to figure out
the shortest connection between these two tunnels. There's a way
you can do that on paper with drawing instruments. But I couldn't
imagine it; I just couldn't conceptualize these things.
In electrical engineering I couldn't conceptualize either. Now,
this is either an indication of my lack of aptitude or application,
or a proof that it's really tough stuff. So I began thinking, "What
can I do?" There really wasn't much help there. There was no
aptitude testing. If you went to see someone and told them your
problem, they were guessing worse than you were because they didn't
know you that closely. Generally, you wouldn't go to see them
because you didn't want to admit to this. You wouldn't want to
admit you were thinking of changing a major. That was a confession
of failure. You certainly wouldn't want to admit that you dropped
out.
In 1955 I read an article in the New Yorker saying that at
Harvard, which has fantastic screening for admission, over half of
the students were dropping out, and Harvard had no idea how many
of them ever came back there or elsewhere to graduate. They thought
that most of them got back some day, but that was a pure conjecture.
So it was actually a lack of communication. So I talked to
myself and I said, "What do I really want?" Well, I liked physical
education, partly because I was deprived of it for two years in
high school when I took ROTC and worked after school and had no
chance to really have some fun. I thought, "It's an honest thing,
it's a valuable thing, it's something I liked, it has many different
aspects to it, and it's not just a snap course."
A lot of people think physical education is a snap course because
a lot of athletes go into it. But it has, at Berkeley, a tremendous
amount of biological science, household science, nutrition, bacteri
ology, physiology, anatomy, kinesiology — which is another tough
thing. There's a conceptualization of how all the muscles work in
support or opposition to each other when you swing a tennis racket
or a golf club, and I want to tell you that is tough stuff.
So that's what I chose, and later on — in 1942, I guess it was,
or maybe in '40; I can't remember — we had a Jewish vocational
guidance bureau here. The director was Morton Gaba, who is now
the executive director emeritus of the Jewish Welfare Federation
in New Orleans. He gave me aptitude tests and it proved that my
hunches were right. I liked to work with people in this capacity —
educational, recreational, social — all the things that, for example,
162
Kuhn: stood me in good stead when I was director of the Jewish Center,
which, of course, was much later. But working with people isn't
just enough; you have to pinpoint it because there are thousands
of ways of working with people. But working with people in a
teaching capacity, that was the thing.
In other words, I took the route that if I enjoyed it, it would
have to have some value to me even if I didn't use it. But engi
neering couldn't have any real value because I neither enjoyed it
nor was good at it. Engineering is not like letters and science
where you can go and read in the library and read classics. You
can't do that in engineering. In fact, engineering at that time
had no numanities courses. So when 1 came back after my three-year
hiatus, I found myself taking a third year of French after having
tatten it in high school seven years before and having forgotten all
of it in the interim.
Dorfman: It must have been difficult.
Kunn: It was very difficult. It didn't make sense to me.
Athletic Activity
Dorfman: You indicated a love for athletics and you talked a little bit about
the sports that you were involved in. What sports particularly?
Kuhn: First of all, I never would have qualified to be a great varsity
player in anything but possibly basketball. That was closed to me
because when I came back after the three years and I went out for
varsity Basketball, you had to sign a statement saying that you had
never earned any money in connection with basketball, either as a
player or a coach or a referee. I had earned money refereeing and
I couldn't sign the statement.
So I went in good conscience to see Dr. Stanley Freeborn, who
was a professor of agriculture and the University representative
to the Pacific Coast Conference, and he would not grant me any
exemption. The amount of money I had earned was something like
$250. This was at the time when Angelo Luisetti, the Ail-American
from Stanford, had been declared an amateur again after having made
a movie in which he earned $20,000, because it was said that he
used that money to repay his parents for his education, which was
so blatantly false because he had a full scholarship at Stanford.
I just thought that this was unfair, because refereeing has
nothing to do with playing ability, nothing whatsoever. You find
referees in all forms of sports now who never played in those
sports.
163
Kunn: but I loved a lot of things. I loved softball, touch football,
tennis, squash, badminton, ping-pong, handball, running. Long
distance running I did to develop my stamina. I took a lot of
intramural soccer, five years of it. I loved to swim, but not
competitively, and I hated diving. I went out for the Cal crew
and that's a great sport.
There are so many wonderful sports. I guess if I counted them
up there would probably be twenty sports that I tried. I didn't
enjoy them all, but you had to learn them. Boxing and wrestling.
Gymnastics I hated because my body just wasn't that flexible. But
any kind of sports, virtually, I just enjoyed. I just loved it.
It was just freedom. It was just —
Dorfman: You participated before you left?
Kuhn: Oh, yes.
Dorfman: As well as after you returned?
Kuhn: Yes, and during the years that I was out of the University you could
find me every weekend at the Julius Kahn Playground here in the
Presidio, playing something — touch football, tennis, softball,
basketball. A lot of hiking.
Dorfman: During your early days at Berkeley did you also participate in
sports at Temple Emanu-El?
Kuhn: Oh, yes, yes. I was a coach at Emanu-El for many years, the basket
ball coach. We had teams involving boys from the fourth grade up.
As a matter of fact, when the Temple House was built, they even
put in a ballet rail for the girls, which was never used because we
never &ot that esoteric. [Chuckles] For years no one knew what it
was, except me. But my point is that you don't have to be a
champion to enjoy athletics and that the stress on college campuses
is too much overemphasis on the varsity sports, whereas actually
athletics can be participated in by every single person there.
Let me give you an example. The men's gymnasium at Berkeley had
one long basketball court, or, if you set the baskets down, you
would have three courts across. Well, every day during basketball
season at four o'clock everyone was kicked off so the varsity could
practice from four to six and the freshmen from six to eight. That
means that literally hundreds and hundreds of men couldn't play
because a very small number of varsity and freshmen athletes had to
practice. Now, either the University has too few facilities and
they should build more gyms, or they should take those varsity and
freshmen and have them practice somewhere else.
Dorfman: To allow more participation?
164
Kuhn: Absolutely. Absolutely. That's my view. I don't believe in
giving any special advantages to athletes as far as admission
policies are concerned or to athletes once they're in there.
They add absolutely nothing to the University by being athletes.
Right now all it is is a system of breeding more professional
athletes so they can go on the baseball, football, or basketball
draft. I really don't see that it's of any great value to the
University. I take a hard line on that.
Dorfman: How many Jewish students would you estimate were at Berkeley?
Kuhn: Well, my guess is a couple of thousand. A few years ago I came
across a figure of A, 500 Jews when the total number of students
was 28,000, so my guess is it was probably 2,000 in my day, many
of whom were from the Bay Area. Most of them, I guess.
I might say also that one of my all-time heroes was Brutus
Hamilton, the Cal track coach, and he considered it immoral to
recruit athletes. If they wanted to come to Berkeley to study,
that was fine. If they wanted to go out for track, he'd help
them. But he never made an offer to anybody of money or anything
else to attract them to Berkeley. They had to want to come. I
believe that's the way it should be.
Dorfman: Did you ever have a nickname?
Kuhn: Oh, yes, yes. My brother Harold called me "Moose."
Dorfman: [Chuckles] Why was that?
Kuhn: Well, I was a big guy. I was bigger than he was. A friend, Henry
Bettman, called me "Butch" for a long time. They kidded me when I
was a kid. They called me "Marshmallow." That's about the extent
of it. Generally, they just shortened it from Marshall to "Marsh."
Dorfman: But no other nicknames while you were at Berkeley?
Kuhn: Oh, at Berkeley? No, I can't think of any. If anybody said, "Hey,
genius," I knew they'd be talking to somebody else.
Enhancing the Potential of a Dynamic University
Dorfman: You talked earlier about what you would have liked to have received
from your education that you didn't.
Kuhn: I want to be fair. I couldn't have received anything unless I was
really putting more into it. First, I would like to have seen more
guidance to show me what was there. I never even took a library
165
Kuhn: tour, which is the most fundamental thing you can do, because
right now I think that the library is the greatest institution
in the world. But you have to really want to learn something.
I often feel that college is wasted on the young anyway.
I would have liked to have been tested for aptitude to sort of
narrow the field down, and to have had someone to follow me along
every semester to say, "You're doing the right thing," or, "You
really should consider changing," or, "Have you thought of this
course?"
Then I would have liked to have asked around more, "Who are
the great professors?" Not just, "Can 1 take their course for
credit?" but, "Can I audit their course?" A man like Herbert
Bolten in history. A fantastic scholar. I could have sat in on
his courses on the history of Western America. It never occurred
to me because I was dumb.
I went to a number of night lectures. But you could spend every
night of the week at Berkeley going to various events and lectures,
if you lived on campus. If you lived in San Francisco and you
stayed over for a concert of a lecture, you would get home at
eleven or twelve at night, and you would just turn around and come
back in the morning. So I would have liked to have lived in
Berkeley more than the two years I was in residence.
Then I would have liked to have had someone guide my reading,
and that's about all. If I could have had somebody to inspire me,
have had one or two great teachers — that's all you can really ask
for, particularly in the field of your interest.
I don't know if I ever mentioned to you this book called There
Was Light. Well, in 1968 it was the University's centennial and
Ansel Adams put out a book of photographs with text by Nancy
Newhall called Let There Be Light, which is the translation of Fiat
Lux, which is the motto of the University of California.
Several years later, Irving Stone edited a book called There Was
Light, which contained thirty-nine stories of people who were
influenced by Berkeley either as undergraduates or graduates,
starting with J.K. Galbraith and ending with Stone himself. I
wondered where he got the idea for it until recently when I read
the centennial issue of the California Monthly . Over half of these
thirty-nine had little stories in there. Well, he apparently got
them to expand their stories and almost every one of these people
encountered someone at Berkeley who treated them kindly and got
them interested.
166
Kuhn: In Stone's own case, he was living in San Francisco and had
visited the University when he was twelve with his mother, who
was then divorced. They later moved to Los Angeles, and when he
came back to Cal he practically lived in the library rather than
went to classes. I mentioned this last week to some friends here
who were related to Irving Stone and who took this statement with
a grain of salt. They said, "Irving Stone's greatest fiction
writing is his description of his own career." But, anyway, it
sounded great to me.
But this is what happened to these people. One of these thirty-
nine was a woman who was the first Negro principal in the Oakland
public schools. She went to Berkeley in the first decade of this
century and for four years no one spoke to her because she was a
black woman.
Dor f man:
Kuhn:
Galbraith loves Berkeley. He thinks that's where it's at. In
fact, in his series The Age of Uncertainty on television now, a
section deals with Berkeley because he feels it is the most dynamic
university in the world. But he outfoxed himself as a young
instructor and ended up at Harvard.
You have here Willard Libby, who discovered the Carbon 22
process. One of the chapters is by him. Judge Stanley Barnes —
a whole variety of people. The University meant so much to them,
and it means so much to me, right now, because I see the potential
there. If I had a tremendous amount of money, I would give a lot
of it to scholarship funds for Berkeley, try to do something every
year for them, because the potential is there. But to realize the
potential there has to be the human touch, the exchange of communi
cation between someone older and someone younger.
The University, in spite of the trouble in the '60s, the free
speech movement — I don't think it's changed that much.
From the time that you were there?
I don't think so. For example, I talked to a friend of mine who
teaches at Santa Cruz. He says, "The average professor teaches
two courses and writes a book, and that writing a book is really
a must for academic advancement." Another friend of mine is at
Rutgers. She has to produce a book by the end of this year or
she's out. Well, that takes time, because everyone is not qualified
to write a book, and they all don't write it at the same speed, and
they all don't find a publisher. So it's not that easy.
But I believe there must be a potential in smaller colleges or
something like this. The universities in England have the college
idea, like Harvard College. At Berkeley you have the College of
Letters and Science, but there's no connection between the word
"college" used at Berkeley and the word "college" used at Oxford.
167
Kuhn: They are not the same thing. It's hard for me to conceive of what
a college is in a small sense, but what it really should be is a
fraternity of young men and women with the don living right on the
campus.
This is what John Hersey did at Yale one year — in fact, for more
than one year. And he wrote that famous book called Letters to the
Alumni. He lived on the campus right with the students, and anyone
could walk into his quarters and talk his problem over with him.
Well, this is something that you couldn't do at Berkeley. You
wouldn't know where to find someone with whom you could become
personally involved, or maybe you could if you sought them out,
but I didn't have the sense to seek them out.
I think to myself, "Why didn't I go up and see Bernard Maybeck?"
I always admired his Palace of Fine Arts. He was living up in the
hills there in Berkeley. Why didn't I go up and see him, just walk
in? Well, I didn't. There were scores of others, business people
in Berkeley, on and off campus, but you just didn't do that. Why?
You didn't have the time or the brains.
Dorfman: Or the experience?
Kuhn: Or the experience. It looks easy now, but a young person has all
of these hangups — the fear of rejection, what would he talk about,
what would he have to offer to the conversation? But there's got
to be a system, because if he can't talk to his parents, and if he
can't talk to the faculty, and his friends aren't that skilled, who
in the hell is he going to talk to? There's got to be someone.
This book I'm reading now, this third chapter of the one I just
finished called The Sun at Noon, by Angoff, his four years at
Harvard — it shows the utter frustration, the ups and downs. One
day he's happy; the next day he's sad. He'd be happy and sad six
times a day, but he's always thinking, "What am I doing? Where am
I going? Am I disappointing my folks? What would they think if I
told them this?" He had no friends to whom he was really close,
and this is true of so many students at Berkeley.
When you look at the morbidity rate on the college campus in
mental illness and suicide, it's staggering, mostly because people
build up these complexes and fears about things that are never going
to happen. But they don't know that, and they think that they are
unique, believe it or not. Thousands and millions have gone through
it all before.
Dorfman: Let's stop here.
[end tape 7, side B]
168
X A RELIGIOUS SCHOOL EDUCATOR'S EXPERIENCES, 1940-1977
[begin tape 8, side A]
Teaching at Temple Emanu-El, 1940-1953, 1971-1977
Dorfman:
Kuhn:
You were a teacher at Temple Emanu-El for a number of years.
you tell me about your work in that role?
Could
The first two years [1940-1942] I taught the eighth grade. This
was primarily the history of the Jews in the United States, which
is generally considered a lethal subject. Then, after that, I
always taught the confirmation class (students in their sophomore
year in high school), and generally in conjunction with the rabbi
of the congregation. That, of course, was a great challenge.
These were kids in their last year in Sunday school, and you tried
to get them inspired so that they would continue in the youth group
and the high school class following confirmation.
I had some really marvelous kids over the years, students who
went on to have great academic records in college. In one class I
had students, one of whom became an Oxford scholar, one was the
captain of the Harvard track team, another was the University
medalist with a 4.0 average at Berkeley, and all in one class at
Emanu-El.
One of my greatest teaching experiences was one Saturday — we met
on Saturday at 9:30 until 10:25, and the students were then expected
to go to services at 10:30 till 12:00. We were discussing some
point (and all of the students went down at 10:25, except about
four girls and myself) and we began arguing this point and continued
and finally I said, "We better get down there before the sermon
starts," and I looked at my watch and it was 1:30. We'd been going
at it for three hours.
Dorfman: Why was the history of the Jews in the United States so lethal?
169
Kuhn: Merely because I was still in college. I didn't know enough beyond
the text, which was lethal. It really isn't an inspirational subject,
It's a factual subject of the waves of migration, the institutions
they formed, things about modern Jewish problems of assimilation and
intermarriage. Too much of the subject matter is defensive, showing
that Jews in this country did their part, whether serving in the
armed forces or creating institutions. But it's not in the main
stream of the Jewish people, unless you know how to teach it much
more subtly than I could then. I could do it now. But there's not
really enough tragedy in it to be truly Jewish.
In other words, you could do a much better job if you could teach
the history of the Jews of the western states than you could of the
history of the Jews in the entire United States, because then you're
talking about the Jews of the Lower East Side and millions of Jews
in New York City. That's impossible for a kid to really project.
When you talk about San Francisco and show maps of the city, where
Temple Emanu-El was, this they can see. It's their own family.
Dorfman:
Kuhn:
Dorfman: Yes.
Did you ever teach that course again at a later date?
History of the Jews in the United States?
Kuhn: No, no. Now, at Temple Beth El in San Mateo, where I was principal
for eighteen years, I didn't teach any classes except an occasional
confirmation class. But I considered that having religious school
assemblies, either the whole school or by departments, was my
teaching opportunity to teach the whole school, whether I was
showing a film, or having someone demonstrate Guide Dogs for the
Blind, or having someone to speak about Biafra, after which we
raised food and medicine and shipped them to Biafra. A lot of this
program was in connection with the Tzedakah program. That was my
teaching of the kids, via the assembly program.
I still maintain a healthy relationship with a tremendous number
of kids I taught or whom I had in basketball, and my children often
say, "Everybody in San Francisco either played basketball for you
or was a student at Temple Emanu-El or Beth El." As a matter of
fact, one of the heartwarming things is the number of kids whom I
taught in recent years whose parents I taught in the '30s and '40s.
Dorfman: Did you really?
Kuhn: Oh, yes, many of them, many of them. In fact, I have a photograph
that's in this year's Scroll of the Howard Miller family of four.
I taught Howard, the father, in '42; Ellie, the mother, in '47;
one daughter, Jean, in '75; and the other daughter, Susan, in '77 —
the first complete family I've taught. But there are several other
families where I have taught all three children of this generation.
It's a great satisfaction.
169a
The Scroll, 1977-5737
MARSHALL
KUHN
AND
THE
MILLER
FAM I LY
During several decades on our Religious School
faculty, Marshall H. Kuhn (second from right)
has served as Principal, Confirmation Class and
Eighth Grade teacher, and basketball coach. Many
of his students over the past few years have been
the children of men and women whom he taught a
generation ago.
All four members of the Howard Miller family were
in Mr. Kuhn's classes. Susan (far left) was con
firmed in 1975, while Jean (far right is a 1977
Confirmand. Their mother, Eleanor (nee Willard)
(center), was confirmed in 1947, the class that
hiked Tamalpais in the rain! Her husband, Howard
(second from left) was in the 1941-42 Eighth Grade
class which made a field trip to the Jewish Home
for the Aged on December 7, 1941. Returning to
Temple, they heard over their car radios the
broadcast of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, marking
the start of World War II. For Mr. Kuhn and other
teachers who entered the Armed Forces, the world
was never quite the same again.
Photograph by Gary Haas
170
Dor f man: I'm sure it is.
Kuhn: The way I do it is to tell the parents, if I'm on good terms with
them as adults, "Don't tell your child you had me. That's the kiss
of death. He won't want to come to my class. Let him find out for
himself if I'm any good or not." In fact, I'm a better teacher now
than I was when I started out.
But, again, one of the techniques I used because it was pleasur
able to me was to get the kids out of the classroom, either on a
field trip, such as a trip to the Jewish Home for the Aged, or
taking the whole class bicycling in Golden Gate Park, or hiking on
Tamalpais. I have taken classes in both the rain and the snow on
Tamalpais, as well as in sunshine. I'd take them on picnics — get
them out of the classroom.
Let them see their teacher is a human being and they'll respond
so much better. Then any time you put in is all to the good, even
if you look at it only as an investment of time. I looked it as
just a chance to have a lot of fun with a lot of nice kids who
happened to be my students. Believe me, I recommend it to every
teacher. Most of them don't do it. They're lazy and crazy.
I want to add one thing here, if I may, an unfinished thought.
What I expected from the University— I never expected Cal to prepare
me as an undergraduate for a career. I think that's the job of a
professional school. I really think the undergraduate college is
a place to teach you, whatever you study, how to solve a particular
problem involved in your course of study. It's a place to teach you
how to do the library research, the techniques of whom to see, the
way you do it, the way you write it up, so that writing skills are
important to me and spelling does count.
I think it's a problem-solving technique more than anything else,
so that you can carry it on into future life when you're not at the
university. I think the main thing is to teach you a love of learn
ing and a love of books, because those will always be around.
Founding the Jewish Youth Athletic League, 1946
Dorfman: What can you tell me now about the founding of the Jewish Youth
Athletic League at Temple Emanu-El?
Kuhn: First of all, I was the athletic director from 1936 to 1942 and
also from 1946 to 1353. In 1946 I was teaching a confirmation
class and I was also basketball coach and I felt we ought to have
171
Kuhn:
Dorfman:
Kuhn:
some organized competition with other schools. So we got all the
Jewish religious schools in San Francisco together (there weren't
as many then as there are now) and we added to it the Jewish
Community Center, the Concordia Argonaut Club, and Homewood Terrace.
So we had about eight teams all told.
We organized a league, and the first winner was Congregation
Chevra Thrilion on 25th Avenue. Then gradually we dropped the
Concordia Argonaut Club, Homewood Terrace, and the Jewish Community
Center, because many of their boys played on religious school teams
already. We added teams from Temple Beth Abraham and Temple Sinai
from the East Bay. Then, when new schools were formed on the
Peninsula and in Marin, we substituted them for the East Bay teams.
Now, this has gone on continuously ever since that first year in
'46- '47, although there are some people who feel that it is much
more recent than that.
But if you check the San Francisco Jewish Bulletin, 1 was the
first, you might say, commissioner of that league because besides
coaching Emanu-El I handled all the assignment of referees and
courts and everything else for the whole league. It's always been
a big success. I wanted it to go beyond basketball. I wanted it
to go beyond just the ninth or tenth grades, and I wanted to involve
girls, but that involves a lot of expenditure of time and money.
No one's really done it. So it's primarily just boys' basketball,
although some schools have girls on their teams. Luckily, I haven't
seen that. I'm not sure I could stand it. [Chuckles]
Were there any athletics prior to 1946?
Temple Emanu-El always had a gym.
didn't have an organized league.
We always had basketball. We
We'd schedule games with other
religious schools if they had a team, or with outside organizations
like the Booker T. Washington Center. Anybody who had a team — Town
School, for example — anybody who had a team where you could get a
good game.
But, as I say, there was no league. There was nothing organized
about it, and I thought we should have a league and put the boys in
competition, realizing that most of these boys, as far as basketball
is concerned, would never grow to be tall enough to really be varsity
players anywhere. Basketball is a game, unfortunately, which is
tied directly to height, and most Jewish kids don't grow to be that
tall.
But they can enjoy success in their own religious school, and
it's been proven that there were any number of instances where boys
stayed in religious schools just to play basketball. I took a tough
line; if you didn't show up for school that day, you didn't play
that afternoon. So it's been a successful thing over the years.
172
Dor f man:
Kuhn:
Dorfman:
Kuhn:
And it did help to encourage attendance at school.
Absolutely. Not only attendance, but enrollment.
we called it. [Laughter]
Muscular Judaism
When would you say athletics were introduced at Temple Emanu-El?
When the Temple House was built in '27 they put in a gymnasium and
Rabbi Newman had this concept of all these clubs — basketball clubs,
chess clubs, stamp clubs — and that's when I first started playing.
I was just a kid. Then, of course, when the Jewish Community Center
opened at California Street and Presidio Avenue in 1932, at which
time Rabbi Newman had left Congregation Emanu-El, the athletic
programs and clubs at Emanu-El weren't anywhere near as strong as
they had started out to be. We still had a basketball team. In
fact, the great star at the University of California in football,
Henry Schaldach, was our coach in my confirmation class. (Hank
Schaldach scored all twenty-one points for the West team in the
Shriner game in his senior year.) Emanu-El has had basketball ever
since.
Now, what happened was that during the '50s, when the birth rate
went up and the size of the student body increased, they had to get
more classrooms at Emanu-El. So they divided off Guild Hall on the
top floor into more classrooms and then they put Guild Hall, the
social hall, down in the basement where the gym was, and so they no
longer have a gym.
The basketball teams now use public facilities, high schools and
junior high schools, for practice and games. So it's always been
carried on, ever since I can remember, ever since the mid- '20s, in
some form or another. But now it's more highly developed as far as
the ninth and tenth grade boys are concerned. There are other
aspects of the athletic program that could be developed a lot more.
P r incipalship at Pen insula Temple Beth El, 1953-1970
Dorfman: You became the principal of the Peninsula Temple Beth El in San
Mateo. Why?
Kuhn: Why?
Dorfman: Yes. What prompted you to move from Temple Emanu-El?
Kuhn: Well, I had been principal at Emanu-El for one year, from '47 to '48.
Rabbi Fine came then and he wanted to run the school himself. So I
went back to teaching confirmation class with him and also supervising
173
Kuhn: the upper grades. Then the school continued to grow and they
brought in a full-time educator from the East, Herbert Zuckerman,
who was at Emanu-El one year. Then Rabbi Fine brought in Rabbi
Meyer Heller as his assistant, later his associate, and he ran
the school.
The Peninsula Temple Beth El had been organized in 1951. They
had a principal, Eric Gattman, who came down with polio, and he
had to slow up his activities. They were looking for a principal
and Rabbi Sanford Rosen asked Rabbi Fine, "Do you know anybody?"
He said, "Well, Marshall used to be our principal and he's not any
more, but maybe he's available." So I met with Rabbi Rosen and he
said, "Okay. I'm going to ask Rabbi Fine if I can borrow you for
a year." And this started a series of letters every year, for
eighteen years: "We'd like to renew the loan of Marshall," as if I
were some kind of a chattel. [Chuckles]
But I went because they offered me, of course, more compensation
than I could possibly earn at Emanu-El, and it was a chance to do a
really top administrative job, although it was very, very time-
consuming — very, very physically demanding. It was twenty-five
miles each way from my home to the Temple. There were periods
there where out of eleven consecutive days I might drive to San
Mateo nine times, for the Jewish holidays, religious school
meetings, and so on.
But I just kept going, and there never was a chance for me to
come back to Emanu-El on any comparable basis. I was offered the
principalship in the late '50s when Rabbi Fine was on sabbatical,
but that would have been only for one year. I didn't want to leave
Beth El just for one year at Emanu-El. So I stayed at Beth El for
eighteen years and I left there in December, 1970 for good. In
fact, I had left in '55 when they brought in a cantor-educator at
Beth-El, but he wasn't really qualified to handle the educational
part of it, so they asked me to come back after six months. It
was continuous from then until the time I left.
I just felt at that point I had had it, and I hadn't had any
chance to participate directly in the formal education of my own
children. When I left Beth El, I asked my youngest daughter Nancy
if she would like to be in my confirmation class at Emanu-El. She
said yes, she would. So I taught her class, which was a lot of
fun. I had a great time.
In her class I started something I did for six years. This was
to start the school year by taking the whole class, or as many as
wanted to go, up to the Mother Lode for a weekend to visit the
pioneer Jewish cemeteries. Of course, we'd leave San Francisco on
a Saturday, and you can't visit a cemetery on a Saturday, so we
would do something else.
173a
Religious School
.. ..;,,.,•- 1^>:
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Deep Are The Roofs
Our Religious School Principal, Mr. Marshall
H. Kuhn, Co-Chairman of the 1963 Jewish Wel
fare Federation campaign, is shown planting a
tree in the Peninsula Temple Beth El sector of the
American Freedom Forest of the Jewish National
Fund during his recent visit to Israel. Mr. Kuhn
visited Israel as a member of the United Jewish
Appeal overseas study mission.
This sector of the Forest is a project of the
Temple Beth El Religious School Children and
was planted during Tu B'shevat (Jewish Arbor
Day) in 1958. Rabbi and Mrs. Sanford Rosen
dedicated this forest last year on their trip to
Israel.
The Beth El children will continue to fulfill
their project during this years' Tu B'shevat ob
servance on February 10.
The Congregation records with sorrow
the passing of
FREDA FELDMAN
Mother of Mr. B. B. Feldman
and
ISADORE GORDON
Father of Mr. Sam Gordon
Ice Skating Party
9th and 10th grade Youth group is going to
have an Ice Skating Party on Saturday, January
26, 1963.
e
Combined Youth Group Event
Ski Trip on Saturday, February 16, 1963 leaving
for Dodge Ridge at 5 :00 a jn. Equipment will be
rented at Dodge Ridge.
There will be a stop for breakfast and dinner,
bring your own lunch. The return to the Temple
will be at approximately 9:00 pjn.
Transportation charge and insurance — $6.50.
Space limited — Sign up with the Temple office
before January 16.
<«
Another Program On Judaism
Commencing in January, a regular weekly pro
gram, "JUDAISM TODAY", is to be produced
by the Board of Rabbis of Northern California,
on Station KTVU, Channel 2, every Wednesday
morning 10:20 to 10:30. It will be a religious
education and information program featuring im
portant community, national and world-wide
events and programs.
January 16 — New Judah Magnes Jewish Mu
seum in Oakland.
January 23— Union of American Hebrew Con
gregations.
<t
A Proper Site
During the construction of the new Jerusalem
School of Hebrew Union College- Jewish Institute
of Religion, devoted to Biblical and Archaeologi
cal studies, which will be opened next year, Dr.
Nelson Glueck, President of the College, noticed
a semi -circular, vertical white limestone ridge. To
his eyes, the trained eyes of an archaeologist, this
appeared to be the kind of artificially carved
escarpment under which tombs or burial caves are
found.
Sure enough, preliminary soundings have al
ready revealed a series of burial caves and in all
probability others will be found — on the very
grounds of the school.
Also found on the grounds was an ancient
Byzantine lamp some 15 centuries old. It will be
used in the School Chapel at the first Kiddush
service when the school opens.
o
Bulletin Schedule . . .
Material in by Jan. 25 for publication Feb. 11
Material in by Feb. 8 for publication Feb. 25
Material in by Feb. 22 for publication March 11
O
Magazine Subscriptions
Be sure to call your chairman, Thelma Bass, at
FI 1-0377 when purchasing any magazine sub
scriptions. Remember, Sisterhood gets credit for
your purchase.
174
Kuhn: For example, in 1972 we went to Oroville. We visited the dam,
the fish hatchery, the Chinese museum, all the things in the town.
Then we went out and had dinner at Country Smorgy and then went to
our camp site up above the dam.
I told the class the story of Ishi, America's last wild Indian,
who was discovered at Oroville in 1911. I had written a special
Havdalah service, following which we would start a campfire. Kids
would then start playing their musical instruments and singing, and
they would talk practically all night. Meanwhile, I'd try to get
at least a little sleep.
The next morning we got up, I served them hot chocolate, and we
left to visit Jewish cemeteries. In this case, we visited Oroville
and Marysville. This is a great educational experience because for
many of the children it was their first visit to a cemetery, but in
a completely impersonal way. They didn't know anyone who was buried
there. These are cemeteries where the last burial may have been
fifty or a hundred years ago. Often we went to Sonora, which is
probably the most beautiful of the cemeteries. One year we went to
Grass Valley and Nevada City and helped to rededicate the Nevada
City Cemetery, which the Commission on the Preservation of Pioneer
Jewish Cemeteries and Landmarks (an activity of the Judah L. Magnes
Memorial Museum) had just taken title to. In 1977 we went to Mokulume
Hill and Jackson, staying overnight at Calaveras Big Trees State Park.
So it's the whole experience of being away from the school with
your class for thirty-six hours, sleeping out of doors, just relaxing.
I asked the kids in all honesty to please tell me what they thought
of this adventure: "Don't kid me by giving me the answers you think
I want. Just tell me three things, in the order of importance, that
you got out of this weekend, and don't sign your name, and don't ask
your neighbor."
I had given them a very loose rein over the weekend, but I had
talked to them seriously three times over the two days, once during
the Havdalah service and again in each of the two cemeteries we
visited.
Their responses indicated that they liked my remarks the most,
which was pleasing to me because it indicated that the youngsters
realized that the trip was a learning opportunity. I really spoke
from the heart each time — my concepts of death and what I felt that
this signified as far as Jewish history in California and the West
was concerned. Many of them had come from the East. California
was really part of their own family heritage now.
175
Kuhn: In telling the story of Ishi, I read Dr. Saxton Pope's statement
about Ishi's death, which is one of the most magnificent statements
in the English language. Well, that was the most important thing
on the weekend to some of them.
Surprisingly, a lot of them said, "Being able to see the stars."
Many of them had not been outdoors at night where there was complete
darkness around, where they could see stars. Of course, there above
the Oroville Dam there's almost no other light, and there are stars
by the billion out in magnificent display.
One student said, "The Havdalah, but don't serve burgundy next
year." [Laughter]
So it's a greatly satisfying experience, because some of the
kids — very few, but some of them — would write me a note. One girl
who had been at Sunday school for ten years said, "I had a few
friends before I left. Now I have over thirty friends." And she
had been in Sunday school her whole life. There's a chance for them
really to mingle. A lot of them will be the only Jewish kid in
their own class in school. They don't all go to the same schools.
And it's a great educational experience if you know how to do it.
I finally killed myself with success, because last year I took
not only thirty-nine kids from Emanu-El but six from Sherith Israel.
The whole group, including aides, was over fifty, and that's just
too many to move around. But I've told Rabbi Magid and Rabbi Asher
to cut the size of the group down, to continue the Mother Lode
trips, to take at least two groups each year. Unfortunately, how
ever, I understand the trips will not take place during the school
year 1977-1978.
Dorfman: What did you tell the youngsters at the cemetery?
Kuhn: Well, I would tell them that in this particular cemetery, particularly
if it was Sonora — if it wasn't Sonora, I would tell them about Sonora.
There was an excerpt from a poem that appears on a gravestone in
Sonora and it reads, "To live in hearts we leave behind is not to
die." This sentence is very attractive to the children. This is
what they really believe.
One child, Amy Waldman, wrote in her autobiography — I have every
confirrnand write an autobiography before the year starts, a Jewish
autobiography. I tell them briefly what facts I want, so I can
really figure out just where they are. Some of them become philo
sophical. Amy was a remarkable girl and she began to write about
death. She said, "I don't believe in your spirit floating around in
heaven, and I think the worst thing in life would be to die and no
one cares. I believe that you only live on in what people remember
about you, the good things." So I've saved that and I use it every
year to read to the other children.
176
Kuhn: One of the students in another class took the poem on the Sonora
gravestone and made his confirmation speech tying the poem in with
the Yom Kippur War. "To live in hearts we leave behind," a beautiful
tribute by Danny Terris.
I tell kids that this poem is the way I also feel. I really
can't conceive of all of these feelings of immortality. But
basically, physiologically and psychologically, 1 really believe
that we do live on in what people remember about us, the good deeds
one does. I said, "That's the way I remember my parents and my
brothers, and you're going to have to struggle with this yourself.
I don't have all the answers. I have even more questions. Even
your parents and grandparents don't have all the answers. They're
struggling themselves in an age much beyond yours. They're much
closer to being in a cemetery some day. And I just want you to
think about it sometimes, as to what may be on your parents' and
grandparents' minds. I don't want this to be morbid. It's a fact
of life. Every animal or plant or species dies. We have no proof
that life or death is better than the other. It's part of the
whole process of life."
The kids think about this. They really do. I just make it
brief and just tell them that this is part of Judaism. You have
to realize that you just can't put it off in the corner somewhere
and say, "It's not going to happen to us." It does happen. In
Judaism we say, "The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away, blessed be
the name of the Lord." They seem to understand this.
Then we go around the cemeteries and we look at tombstones, and
they begin to realize the changes in society in the last century.
In Oroville there are four headstones above children's graves; one
child was two years of age, one was four, and one was eight, all in
the same family. They look at certain graves in the Jackson ceme
tery. Here's a grave of a woman who had three children who died;
one was stillborn and the other two died at one and three days of
age. Now, beyond that, all these early deaths at Jackson — if you
got beyond the fifth year, you could live to seventy. Well, they
will look at all these things and they begin to think, "Oh, my
gosh!"
Dorfman: It's a new awareness for them.
Kuhn: "These deaths were not due to war," I said, "but to disease. This
was lack of medical knowledge. This was an absence of obstetrical
care, whatever it might be. This is why Jews had large families.
Can you imagine this woman who had three children die at childbirth,
really, and her attitude that she hadn't produced an heir for her
husband? Can you imagine psychologically what she had to live with?"
Well, they began to think of this.
177
Kuhn: We had a marvelous thing up in Oroville. There was a husband
and wife who died on the same day, 1877. So I asked, "Can you
explain this?" "A car accident." I said, "No, it's a nice try."
[Chuckles] But I actually had Bob Levinson [Robert E. Levinson,
Ph.D., San Jose State University] look it up in the city records
up there. The husband and wife were both quite ill, and one died
in the morning and one in the afternoon, quite independently of
each other. But it's fascinating. You'll come across a tombstone
in Marysville of someone born in 1789. Another tombstone says,
"So-and-So killed by a highwayman on the way to Laporte." I said,
"You know, he's probably stealing gold." The tombstones are
fascinating.
We were up in Placerville, a little Jewish cemetery, and the
previous night I had taken them to see Billy Jack. I don't know
if you saw the movie Billy Jack — quite a remarkable movie, very
unusual. The two bad guys are Mr. Posner and his son Bernie, and
their attitude toward the Indians is in the worst American tradition.
So the next day we were having lunch at Colma, the Gold Discovery
State Park near Sutter's Mill. So I asked these kids, "Is there
anything about the movie that strikes you as anti-Semitic? Well,
let me tell you something. You just saw a grave this morning that
says, 'So-and-So, native of Posen,' so he could be a Posner, just
like the native of Hamburg is a Hamburger, and a native of Berlin
is a Berliner. Posner is the same name as was in that movie last
night. You never heard of anyone named Posner in a movie before,
did you, or on TV or radio?" "No." I said, "Well, that's a Jewish
name. You ought to think about that. I'm not saying that the
movie is anti-Semitic at all, but it's something to think about.
Why not Smith or Jones or Brown or Johnson? Why Posner?" Well,
I'll tell you, it shook them up. And that's the whole idea, to
make them think.
Several times I took classes to see a man named Kenneth Fox.
He's a dentist in Auburn, and there's no Jewish cemetery there,
but it's on the way either to Placerville or to Grass Valley. He's
a man who in his mid-thirties decided that he wanted to become a
sculptor as a hobby. So he took it up and he has a huge studio
behind his dental office. He's got sculptures that are small and
some that are big. Some are fifty tons, huge things, huge things.
He was commissioned by several veterans' posts to create a peace
statue, which he did, but unlike most peace statues which are really
war statues, his was a Bill Mauldin-type GI carrying a dead buddy
in his arms. On the pedestal it says, "Why?" And they put this
statue in front of the county administration building and connected
an eternal flame, and Dr. Fox paid the gas bill.
178
Kuhn: A few years later someone on the five-member county board of
supervisors complained, "We can't have that statue here anymore
because the draft board is in this building and a potential
draftee doesn't want to go by looking at that." So they were
going to vote on getting rid of this statue.
So Dr. Fox went to a packed meeting of the board of supervisors
and he said, "Look, I can't speak well and 1 can't write well, but
1 can create a sculpture and this is my method of expression. I
had a niece, eighteen, who died, and I wondered why, and I said,
"I wonder why people die in Vietnam." I don't know the answer,
and you're infringing on my right of free expression under the
First Amendment."
So they voted three to two to move the statue, which wasn't
enough because one supervisor said, "My dear colleagues, in this
county it has to be four to one to do anything that involves the
expenditure of money, and it would cost some money to move that
statue, so we can't move it."
I asked him, "Did you lose any patients because of this?"
"I lost some and I gained some," he said, "but the worst thing
that happened was that the American Legion and the Veterans of
Foreign Wars and all the other veteran organizations who were
sponsors when they wanted to put the statue up — by the time it
was supposed to be removed, none of them came to my defense."
So our class went to his studio and would pick Dr. Fox up on
our bus. We'd drive half a mile to where the statue was, and I
would tell the kids, "I'm going to tell you in front of Dr. Fox
that he's a guy with guts, which is the rarest commodity in the
world. Brains aren't rare. Physical ability isn't rare, but guts
are rare. Here's a guy who laid it on the line."
He would talk to them, and one kid said, "Isn't there a little
flower between the fingers of that dead GI?" He said, "You're the
first one who's ever noticed that." So when we left him I told
the kids, "Now, there's a guy who's a little nuts, but in such a
beautiful way."
We visited Dr. Fox three times. That's some kind of an educa
tional experience that you're not going to get anywhere else.
You're out in the boonies, out in Auburn, to find a guy who was
willing to lay it on the line for truth. These were the kinds of
things I would try to bring up on- these weekends. They were all
very, very gratifying — the kids' responses. It also unified the
class after confirmation year just started. Their response to
everything else that came later in the year was more positive
because they realized, "The guy teaching us, he's an okay guy."
179
Dorfman: There was more of an acceptance?
Kuhn: Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely.
Major Contributions as a Teacher and Principal
Dorfman: What would you say your major contribution to that Temple was?
Kuhn: To Temple Emanu-El?
Dorfman: To Temple Beth El.
Kuhn: My major contribution to Beth El? Well, we ran a very effective,
efficient school. For a long time every member of the faculty was
a member of the congregation and had his own child in the school,
so he definitely had a personal interest. It was a school well
run administratively. There wasn't any lost time, any lost motion,
any noise. I would say that's the way a school should be.
I would say the two things I did there — one was the Tzedakah
program, getting the kids aware of some of the organizations they
were contributing to by involving them — for example, marching for
UNICEF. I'd take the sixth grade to the graduation of Guide Dogs
for the Blind in San Rafael so the children would know what that
agency was. The seventh grade I took to the Jewish Home for the
Aged. As I say, we had several speakers over the years from the
SS Hope, which is a tremendous program. Our kids saw a doctor who
gave three months out of his life at no pay in order to help people
of another nation. I said, "That's the greatest thing America has
done." So the Tzedakah program was the first thing.
The second is that when we built the new school and when we
expanded it, I insisted they include a library the size of two
classrooms, and that was my baby. That's the thing I'm proudest
of because I believe that if you can get a kid to read, or an
adult, and have a Jewish book at his bedside, you've doubled or
tripled your teaching time. So we use the library to try to
stimulate the reading habit.
There was our yell: "Two, four, six, eight, who do we appreciate?
Beth El!" Except I made it, "Alef, bet, gimel, dolid, we're the
team that's really solid!"
180
[The following insert was recorded during an editing session with
Marshall H. Kuhn at his home at 30 7th Avenue, San Francisco, on
March 27, 1978.]
Kuhn: Again, in a light vein, let me tell you a story. At the time I
retired as principal of Temple Beth El, the educators council of
the Bureau of Jewish Education, which is a group consisting of all
the principals of religious schools, of which I was one of the
founders and one of the past chairmen, gave me a dinner and a gift.
And in my response, with tongue in cheek, I said, "I assume all of
you have read Michener's The Source." And they all had. "Well,
the book after that, Iberia, had also great Jewish overtones."
And, fortunately for me, none of them had read it. I said that
you could trace migrations of Jews by where esrogim would grow,
the esrog, because you had to have esrog for Succoth.
There's a similar tradition as far as horseradish is concerned.
In Iberia, Michener points out that the best horseradish is not
grown up by the Basques in the mountains, but along the flatlands.
As a matter of fact, this has entered Jewish liturgy, and you may
have heard sometime in the recent past that there is a song that
is quite popular, and it goes something like this, "The chrain in
Spain grows mainly on the plain. By jove, I think he's got it I"
Well, I sure had them, I'll tell you.
[end of insert]
Dorfman: What can you tell me about your work as principal at Emanu-El?
Kuhn: Well, it was just a year thing. At the start of the year, Irving
Reichert was still rabbi, and he had known me as confirmand and
basketball coach, and then I was a college student, and then I was
in the Navy. He liked the way I taught the confirmation class.
This was just after the war, when I came back. During the war
there were practically no men on the Emanu-El faculty and the kids
ran wild. Their goal was to see how many teachers they could knock
off in a year. I came back and I replaced Barbara Bine Emerich.
She was a probation officer during the week in the juvenile court.
She said, "Marshall, I deal with delinquents all day long. You
can have them on Sunday."
So it took me three months with this confirmation class of
'46- '47 to make them realize that I was the teacher and they were
the students and there was a difference, and then we had no trouble.
We had a marvelous time after that.
Well, Irving Reichert liked the way I handled this class, so he
said, "I would like you to be principal."
[end tape 8, side A; begin tape 8, side B]
181
Kuhn: Irving Reichert asked me to be the principal from '47 to '48. He
liked the way 1 handled kids. He thought I was a disciplinarian,
and he was sort of a law and order man as far as school was con
cerned. So I accepted. It was a very difficult thing because his
own position was in jeopardy. In fact, he left Emanu-El in the
middle of the school year. After that, my job for the last six
months was just to keep the ship afloat, realizing there would soon
be a new rabbi and there would obviously be changes.
This was difficult for me because the chairman of the religious
school committee, Dan Hone, had definite ideas about religious
education. The Temple was interviewing potential rabbis, and every
Saturday afternoon he would get hold of a new prospective rabbi and
ask for his ideas of religious education and then hit me the next
week with, "That's the way we ought to run our school," that week.
The next week he'd have different ideas, and I was going crazy.
But it worked out all right. That was just the one year.
Actually, in many schools when the secretary runs the school,
she may be the only full-time employee on the school staff. This
is one of the biggest problems in Jewish education in America, that
the number of schools that have part-time principals who are
businessmen or public school teachers or whatever else they may do,
and run the religious school on their peripheral time, form the
majority. Especially in the West and in San Francisco particularly,
in this area, part-time principalship seems to be more common than
elsewhere.
The number of cases where you have a cantor-educator running the
school, or a full-time educator, out here is very, very minimal.
There's really no incentive for any man to come out and do it,
because he's sort of in a vacuum if he's the only one who's doing
it that way. If the man is a cantor-educator, his time is split
between the two duties, and most of them, frankly, are more cantors
than they are educators. These are not particularly compatible
professions. Yet all the literature you read in pedagogical maga
zines seems always directed to the full-time man.
I thought someday I might do an article on what it's like to
really run a Sunday school on just the reserves of your energy.
The school says, "You have a part-time principal. Why not give
him a part-time secretary?" There may be actually no one who's
full-time with respect to the school, which is the leading activity
of the whole congregation. Far more kids come to Sunday school
than parents go to a service, and for a longer period of time, and
yet, because it's kids, the adults don't really pay the school the
full service they should, and they're going to get what they pay
for.
182
Kuhn: This part-time work after a full business day is known as moon
lighting. But, take it from me, there's nothing romantic about it.
I used to come back from Beth El, sometimes at four or five o'clock
in the morning, and I'd have to stop in Golden Gate Park and sleep
for five minutes just to get enough strength to drive down to 7th
Avenue. It just was physically debilitating many times.
A lot of it you do by phone, by dictaphone, and then, as I say,
you depend upon the skill of whatever secretary or whatever secre
tarial help you _do have, and frequently that changes. Or maybe
they'll say, "Well, we'll have you divide the secretary between
the rabbi and yourself." The rabbi is right there in the office,
and if his sermon has to be typed, then you're going to take what
secretarial time is left, if any.
Frequently on a Sunday morning I would drive to my office down
town and mimeograph the teachers' notice and then drive to San
Mateo. So every time you went out on Saturday night you had to
wonder, "What do I have to do Sunday morning before I go down there?"
It's a huge problem; it really is. No one really understands it,
unless he's done it.
Dorfman: What did you mean when you said you felt that parents were the last
frontier?
Kuhn: Let me give you examples. You'll schedule a back-to-school night,
either for the whole school or for certain grades. The percentage
of parents who come is so small, even if you hip it up with free
food or a drawing or something like that. Now, you can come to
several conclusions. The most heartening is to say, "Well, you're
doing such a great job that they don't have to come. Their absence
is their seal of approval." I don't believe that.
I believe they don't really care. What they're really saying to
you is, "Do whatever you want to our kids as effectively as possible,
stuff as much information in them in two hours, just so long as we
can make our car pool. We're not going to give you any more time on
Sunday. We'll give you more time during the week if the kid's pre
paring for bar mitzvah." Basically that's it. There are few
exceptions, but not many.
So you might say that a one-day-a-week school is bound to fail,
and the day school movement really shows this in a way, although
some of these enrollments of day schools are really not all that
valid. You get some parents who put their kids in a Hebrew day
school because it's a private school. There are no blacks, there
are smaller classes, there's a lot of teacher-pupil contact, and
they're learning a foreign language which now is accepted for
admission at high schools, colleges, and so on. So some of this
is not really the desire of the parents for the kid to have a
more intense religious education.
183
Kuhn: The point is, what does a kid do with it, with any education,
when he brings it home, if he has parents who say, "Look, it's all
right for you to learn about Passover in Sunday school, but your
mother doesn't want to make a seder." This is one of the biggest
frustrations in the world. There is virtually nothing that a kid
can't do if taught by a parent or a teacher. The adult doesn't
have to do it, but the kid can do it if he's taught properly —
conducting the services, preparing Friday night's dinner, and so
on.
Temple Beth El had its twenty-fifth anniversary this year, and
they asked me to write a piece for an ad book that will come out
next month and will talk about highlights during my career there.
I pointed out that one of the frightening things was that every
Passover we had a model seder in each classroom. We would have
one of the Sisterhood ladies as a mother to serve the model foods
and a father of one of the children to lead the service, with all
the kids as his children.
And how many fathers there were who wouldn't do this! Some would
even come the week before for training and then call up during the
week and cancel out. They just could not perform that role. Fright
ening. Now, the article I submitted for the ad book contained this
observation about using fathers to conduct class seders. When the
ad book was actually released, however, they had shortened my article
and eliminated this reference. "Shortage of space," they explained.
My explanation is that unpleasant truths may not be compatible with
nostalgia.
Dorfman: Why do you think they were —
Kuhn: Because of an inadequacy within themselves, really, really. It's
frightening because the men have abdicated to women. The Sisterhood
runs the show. Almost every men's club, first of all, doesn't
represent all the men. It represents only a small percentage of
the men, and only a small percentage of that percentage are active.
You take Judaism the way it was for centuries — the men ran it. The
show was a man's place. The women were upstairs or behind the
curtain.
I'm not saying this is true everywhere, but it's true at least
in the reform movement. It's just a horrible thing. It's a vicar
ious thing. We send our kids to the dentist to get their teeth
straightened, to the oboe teacher to learn music, and we're sending
them to religious school to become religious, even though we're not
religious ourselves. That can't be done.
184
Kuhn:
Dorfman:
Kuhn:
Have I told you the piano analogy? The piano analogy is this,
and I told this at a parents' meeting one time. If you have a
child and you want that child to learn to play the piano, you
arrange for lessons and you buy records and tapes. You see Leonard
Bernstein on television, and you have the kid watch that, and he
hears the Standard School Broadcast. He may go to a symphony
concert or hear a Young Audience concert. But the most important
thing is that you have a piano in your home for the kid to practice
on, because without that nothing else will work.
I'm saying that unless you have a piano in your home, a Jewish
piano, nothing we do here can work. You're just kidding yourself,
and I won't kid you, and I won't kid myself. Unless you do it in
your home, it ain't going to work,
has to see his parents do it.
There's just no way. The kid
I said, "If you want it to start simply, without worrying about
all these books on these shelves, just take this little pamphlet
and observe the Kiddush each Friday night. There's no way you can
do it wrong, even if you can't remember the prayers. Think up your
own. You bless the candles, you bless the bread, the wine, you
bless your children. That's all, and you've blessed yourself.
Start with that."
Well, I have no idea how many do, but that's really how simple
it is. But we've gotten so far away from it, it's just shocking.
So that's what I mean. The parents are the last frontier, because
up to a certain age the kids are going to do what the parents want.
I had a father who said to me, "I want you to get my kid to go
to Sunday school." So I said, "Son, come over here. Why won't you
go to Sunday school?" He said, "Well, my dad invites me out on his
boat each Sunday." I said, "Is this true?" The father said, "Yes."
I said to the boy, "Suppose your father said you had to go to Sunday
school." He said, "Well, I'd go." So I turned to the father and
said, "What are you talking to me for? Talk to yourself. Talk to
your son. He's your son."
Whenever I used to make an appeal for funds to the Sunday school,
I'd just tell the finance committee and the board of directors,
"Look, they're your children. They're not my children. They're
your children. What do you want for them?" And they never cut my
budget.
They never cut your budget?
No, never, never.
185
Indications for Change in Religious School Instruction
Dorfman: How has religious instruction at Temple Emanu-El changed since your
childhood?
Kuhn: Well, I'm not an expert in it, except for my own class, because the
confirmation class and the high school class are in a separate
division of the school, entirely set apart from the kindergarten
and the first nine grades. It depends upon teachers. I'm really
not impressed with the quality of the faculty at Emanu-El. There
are some teachers who are exceptional, who have been there a long
time, but a lot of others are there for only one year. Maybe
they're a college student or an Israeli who doesn't have the time
or the interest. I'm not sure they get all the support they need.
I base this not upon direct observation of the classes but upon
what kids tell me and what parents tell me, that it's pretty much
of a disaster area. I think this is really shocking. I think we
should have learned something over the years that could make a
teacher more effective. But it starts with teachers. It starts
with recruitment, motivation, inspiration, praise — all the things
that a teacher really wants. He really doesn't want compensation
that much. He may need it for financial reasons, but what he really
wants is recognition.
Years go by at Emanu-El, for example, where they completely dis
regard one of the Jewish holidays, Lag Baomer, which is a teacher-
recognition day. It is rare that anyone ever says a good word for
the teacher. By and large, no one cares.
In my thinking, the most important thing for a rabbi, who is my
teacher, the teacher of children, is to get the congregation in
spired to want to do what he's doing and give them more of his time.
He should meet in his study and in his home, and spend time with
them, and urge them to use the Jewish Community Library and take
courses there and give some courses themselves, and really make
the school a big thing. Then the future of your congregation is
going to be assured. But if you can't inspire the kids, you're
not going to inspire anybody else.
You only have them for ten years and that's really not much when
you figure out it's thirty- four sessions a year, maximum, for two
hours. But it can be built up more. You can use the camping
program. You can use the summers. There are lots of ways it could
be done, if you want to do it. But it's will. The resources are
tremendous if you want to employ them. But it starts with deciding:
(a) it's worthwhile, and (b) we can do it. In spite of setbacks
we'll have, we can do it.
186
Kuhn: If you throw in the towel, you say, "Well, here we've tried it
and it won't work," or, "They tried it somewhere else and it didn't
work," or, "It isn't worth even trying" — only if you would partici
pate. I don't know. Maybe one of the few would be a future rabbi.
I don't know. I've had one kid who became a rabbi, Roger Herst, in
my '53 class, and that's a good feeling.
Some of the teachers at Temple Emanu-El Religious School were
John Gorfinkel; Louis Heilbron, prominent attorney and onetime
president of the board of trustees of state colleges; David
Rubenstein; Harold Levy; Myer Kahn; Daniel Berg; Walter Gabriel;
George Goodday; and Ruth Samuelsen.
Then, in the year in which I was principal, I had three very
distinguished teachers. One was George Karonsky, now a doctor of
education and a prominent assistant superintendent of the San
Francisco Unified School District. David Robins, now the rabbi at
Temple Emanu-El, San Jose. And another, William Zev Br inner, now
professor of Near Eastern languages and thought at Berkeley.
Another fine teacher was Joseph B. Glaser, then a law student
at the University of San Francisco, who was inspired by Rabbi Fine
to go to rabbinical school when he finished his law studies and is
now the executive vice-president of the Central Council of American
Rabbis. So I wasn't dealing with a bunch of know-nothings, after
all.
If you look at some schools over the years, they never produced
enough kids for the rabbinate to even replace their own. It may be
a symptom of our times in American life, in Jewish life, and in
reform Jewish life. I don't know. The reform movement seems to me
to spend an awful lot of time in narcissism, comforting ourselves
that somehow we're better than the orthodox or conservative. I
don't believe that anybody's better than anybody else. They're
just different branches of the same school. But you've got to do
something for the kids.
The point is that it's so rewarding. I've taken classes out to
convalescent homes and had the kids conduct a seder for shut-ins,
because hospitals have seders but nursing homes generally don't.
The kids conducted the whole seder. They know how to read. They
know how to chant or sing. The older people loved to hear them
sing the songs, and the kids were doing something. An adult doesn't
have to do it for them. He has to teach them the first time and
then just sit back.
This is true of religion in the home. A little child can come
along, seven years of age, and ask, "Mommy, can I set the table for
Friday night?" Why not? Beautiful, beautiful. But if she pats the
child on the head and says, "When you're older," or, "We're eating
at McDonald's tonight" — no. Sometimes it gets very discouraging.
187
Kuhn: But I'll tell you this. We have this summer program in Israel,
and Temple Emanu-El actually sends a higher percentage of its kids
than any other place in the country. This year I think we had
forty-eight kids out of a class of seventy-three who spent seven
weeks in Israel. Now, a lot of kids stay in the confirmation class
in school just to qualify for that trip. That makes them more
active in the high school class and the youth group afterwards, as
teacher aides and so on.
Now, many of these kids continue their Hebrew studies or they
go back to Israel to study, work, or travel. Certainly the level
of Hebrew comprehension is much higher now. First of all, to be a
bar mitzvah you have to go more years and more days a week than
before. Secondly, as I say, because of this Israel experience a
lot of kids are studying Hebrew particularly because it's recognized
as an accepted foreign language by secondary schools and colleges.
My own daughter Nancy goes now to the Bureau of Jewish Education
each Wednesday night to study Hebrew. She went on the Israel summer
trip five years ago.
All right, in a sense, even though I may have sounded pessimistic,
it was only in relationship to the possibilities, because when I was
in Sunday school it was far worse, far worse. It was so coldly per
formed. All the hymns were in English. There was very little
Hebrew used, so that in a sense it's better now, and in another
sense we are reversing the downward trend. We're doing something
that we thought impossible, that in the fall from Judaism of the
immigrant population — the orthodox became the reform; reform became
atheist, sort of Universalist or Unitarians or Quakers — we're
reversing that.
So the kids in many cases now — many cases — are a hell of a lot
better Jews than their parents, particularly the ones who go to
Israel on the summer trip. Their parents have never spent seven
weeks in Israel, particularly of the intensity these kids get, the
kind of experiences to which they're exposed. And then, if they go
on to college, more and more universities are having courses in
Judaica for credit. Berkeley certainly has far more now than it
had when I was there. The Federation's endowment fund has just
approved providing funds to assist Stanford in establishing a
lectureship in Jewish Studies.
So it's better now. When I say it's bad now, it's still better
than it was when I was there. When I was there, what did I do for
bar mitzvah? I said the broches over the Torah in Hebrew and I read
the Torah translation in English and the Haftorah in English. For
that I had to give up a job that I really needed during the depres
sion. It was ridiculous. Well, now you couldn't be bar mitzvah
with that little preparation. You have to really train for several
188
Kuhn: years. So it is better. But, as I'm saying, related to the
potential, it could be even better, I think. The parents are a
large part of it.
Plus, the institution itself doesn't want to admit it's wrong.
It doesn't really want to make a change, and unless there's a will
to make a change there's no point in even having a survey to find
out what kind of change you should make. If you do make a change,
you don't change overnight.
I contend that any religious institution is just like any other
educational institution. You can only make one major change a
year, if that. You have to get everybody working together —
parents, kids, faculty, administration — so you can't really turn
around overnight. But I'm talking about educational level and the
kids' interest and inspiration. It could be better, I think, than
it is. But ours was just horrible. Ours was horrible.
Declining a Role in the Rabbinate
Dorfman: In view of your deep involvement and commitment to both Judaism and
Jewish life, did you ever consider becoming a rabbi?
Kuhn: Oh, yes. During World War II, I got that idea and I talked to Rabbi
Newman about it. Rabbi Reichert heard about it from him and was
very disappointed that I hadn't discussed it with him first. But
nothing came out of it because I really didn't have the Hebrew
background, and that is a basic need.
Roger Herst didn't have it either, so when he was at Berkeley he
studied Hebrew intensively as an undergraduate. But I was out of
college by the time I was in the Navy, and it would have meant a
tremendous involvement in time. I'm not really that good a student
of foreign languages, and Hebrew is two foreign languages, two
different alphabets.
Dorfman: Do you think you would have been a good rabbi?
Kuhn: Well, I might have been a good one. I don't know. I don't think I
have a tough enough hide. You have to have a tough hide to be a
rabbi. I don't like to be criticized, particularly unfairly, and
rabbis are frequently criticized, no matter what kind of a stand
they take. They aren't held in the esteem in which they should be
held, but, of course, they're not perfect either.
189
Kuhn: The Central Conference of American Rabbis conducted a survey of
the American Reform Rabbinate rabbis several years ago that revealed
a tremendous number of rabbis have really serious doubts about their
own commitment. That's a very shocking thing.
No, I felt that the way I've been able to serve, working with the
kids, is possibly the best notch for me. I have a low threshold of
tolerance with some of the adults in the congregation.
Dorfman: Have you ever regretted not becoming a rabbi?
Kuhn: Oh, no, no, no. There are a lot of things about being a rabbi that
wouldn't appeal to me. I wouldn't want to conduct funerals particu
larly. I wouldn't want to put up with some of the absolute indig
nities to which a rabbi is frequently subjected by his board of
directors, and that's true at Temple Emanu-El, believe me. They
can be rough. I wouldn't want to be beholden to a group of laymen
for my continued tenure. I'd be better off if I were a Catholic
priest. The lay people don't have anything to say about it. No, I
never regretted not becoming a rabbi at all, no.
Dorfman: I think we can stop here for tonight.
Kuhn : Okay .
[end tape 8, side B]
Perception of Teaching
[Interview 6: November 15, 1977]
[begin tape 9, side A]
Dorfman: Before we go on this evening, I would like to go back a little and
pick up additional information. First of all, I would like to know
how you feel about teaching.
Kuhn: I love to teach. I think it's one of the finest professions there
is, and with everything I learned by reading or in experience I've
always tried to figure out, what am I going to do with this, who
am I going to share this with, and in what form can I use it to
instruct the young, knowing all the time that you have no way at
all of knowing what's going to stick with them. That's why it's
like a beautiful — it's like a game. It comes back to you later on
when you find out that some of the things you've said people remember
and took seriously.
190
Kuhn: It's just a marvelous thing. Maybe I say that because I feel like
I've been a teacher, but I can't think of anything better. It's,
first of all, the most beautiful part of the Jewish tradition.
It's an exalted role. "Thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy
children." This mitzvah set forth in the Torah represents the
parents' primary obligation. And whether the teaching is conducted
only by the parent or includes professional teachers engaged by the
congregation, nonetheless it's an exalted role.
Dorfman: You told me that Phoebe Litzberg Frank was one of the very memorable
teachers at Temple Emanu-El.
Kuhn: Yes, she was my kindergarten teacher. I wouldn't have any way of
remembering what she taught, except that we had one game we played.
Instead of musical chairs, it was musical squares, because we walked
around. I remember I won and I got a book. She was just such a
marvelous person and full of love for children, and you responded.
I didn't have any idea why she did it. I think at that age the
greatest thing is shyness. Small children have hang-ups the same
as anybody else.
Dorfman: Who was Dr. Henry Hart?
Kuhn: Dr. Henry Hart was a man who was a great scholar, who had a degree
in law and in pharmacy. He was secretary to Rabbi Martin Meyer and
then he became active in Oriental fine arts groups. He and his wife
had the big art goods store at Post and Powell, where United Airlines
is today, which they operated, I guess, for several decades. After
his wife passed away, he gave up the business. He would go over to
China one or two times a year and buy things. He became quite an
expert in Chinese and Japanese and translated a number of great
classics, particularly from Chinese into English. I have copies of
most of his books.
He and I became friendly through Temple Emanu-El. I used to go
over to his home and talk to him about all these things he knew.
He had a great library and he had a great record collection. I
even took several courses from him at UC Extension. He was a very
unusual man, very hurt that he had never gotten more academic
recognition. Of course, his training in Oriental subjects wasn't
as formal as you would have to have had if you were a professor at
Berkeley. The academicians, they take care of their own. We were
good friends for just about ten years.
Dorfman: When did you meet?
Kuhn: We met about 1940. I was either still in college or working for
the bank before I'd gone back to college. He was very kind to me.
I had dinner in his home about two or three times a week. He was
191
Kuhn: a widower then and he later remarried. He was very, very kind to
me and I think I was a good audience for him. But I was awed by
his knowledge. He was just a great and rapid reader, and he had
an encyclopedic knowledge of just about everything. Then we had a
falling out and that ended that.
Dorfman: How do you remember him?
Kuhn: A very intense man in two demanding professions. He had the feeling
that when he went out of business he suffered some unjustifiable
losses, because his attorney had drawn up the lease with the owners
of the property on a percentage basis of sales but did not include
a clause that if you have a closing sale this percentage does not
apply.
So he took a tremendous loss when he went out of business. He
didn't have that much money to support him in the style to which
he had become accustomed. He had great tragedies. Not only did
his wife die of cancer, but both his daughters predeceased him,
also of cancer, and it was just horrible.
Then he remarried a woman of considerable means and he had no
more financial problems. He had other problems, but they weren't
financial. [Chuckles]
Dorfman: How did he affect your life?
Kuhn: I would say in two ways. One, he was a man who studied all his
life. He didn't just put his books on the shelf after he had
gotten his degree. Two, in spite of that, I felt there were some
weaknesses in his character, showing that even the greatest can
fall. I don't want to go into it personally, what they were, but
it proved to me that even though a man may know every religion in
the world, from Buddhism to Shintoism to Hinduism and everything
else, it takes force of character to follow it out. There were
just, in my judgment, certain areas where he was lacking. But it
took me a long time to figure that out.
Dorfman: How would you say you feel about children in relation to teaching?
Kuhn: Well, I like to teach any age group. My favorite age group is
fifteen-year-olds, but I like to teach any age group. You have to
use different approaches. Of course, teaching kindergarten is a
cinch because these kids are so ready for it, it's a pleasure, even
for someone who only teaches older children. They're just so
responsive, so full of love, so full of questions, and they're not
jaded in any way. It's amazing how a fourth-grade or a seventh-
grade child can be jaded. So children are just terrific. I like
teaching adults. It doesn't make any difference to me.
192
Dorfman: Why do you enjoy teaching fifteen-year-olds?
Kuhn: Well, because in a Sunday school set-up, which is where I've done
most of my teaching, that's the top grade. They're the ones that
you have to get now, or they're gone. What do you want them now
for? You don't want them to leave. You want them to join the
youth group, or enroll in a high school class, or at least have
some kind of a pattern of reading. You have to make up for all
the deficiencies in their prior Sunday school years. That's the
challenge there. That's why this Israel study program has been
such a tremendous thing, because they go out of the school with a
great feeling.
Dorfman: How have you changed as a teacher?
Kuhn: Oh, I'm much better, much better prepared. I know far more and I'm
not just a couple of chapters ahead of the kids. I don't have to
depend upon the books so much. I've lived a lot of these things.
I was born in 1916, the Balfour Declaration was in 1917, and the
ground was broken for Temple Emanu-El in 1925. I heard Weitzmann
here in San Francisco, as I told you. I've been to Israel three
times and Europe twice, and I can talk from personal experience.
I don't need a book. I need a book to back me up, but in reality
it's much more interesting just to talk things over and go over
your own knowledge, to talk about people whom you've known and
heard — much better, much looser, because I came from a tradition
at Temple Emanu-El where the school was run like a public school.
The years were kind of like this when I was in religious school
as a student. It ran for two hours. You got there; you were in
class. You sat there in formal rows. You got academic grades,
and then about thirty to forty-five minutes before the end of the
session, every Sunday, you went to an assembly, and you sang the
same songs, not once but three, four, or five times until Cantor
Kinder (may he rest in peace) decided that you had sung them well
enough, the whole school.
The singing was preceded by reciting the Temple Emanu-El Religious
School Opening Prayer, which contains the Ten Commandments, and,
boy, did we really know them, because it was ceaseless repetition.
Every Sunday was exactly the same. You might have a movie, you
might have something else, but it was a never-changing pattern.
There was never any deviation and it was boring; that's the whole
thing.
I tried to deviate from that by, one, teaching a different way,
and, two, getting the kids out of the Sunday school by taking them
to a home of one of the students who lived within walking distance.
193
Kuhn: When I went back to teaching at Emanu-El in '71, that's what we
did. I'd analyze the confirmation class and call the parents and
say, "Listen, I want to bring the kids over and sit in the rumpus
room, and I'd like you to serve refreshments and make it like
sitting around your home." That was very successful.
Assessing the Quality of Jewish Education
Dor f man: As the result of your experience, what would you say was the quality
of the Jewish education?
Kuhn: Of their Jewish education?
Dorfman: Yes.
Kuhn: Well, let me tell you this. I've had parents say to me, too many
parents say to me, "I'm not religious nor is my husband, but here
is my child," and, of course, we can't do much about that. If the
parents really want to do something, instead of loading them up
with a bunch of books all you do is give them a little plastic
card that has the Friday night Kiddush on it. You say, "Here, I
want you to observe the Sabbath. There's no way you can do it
wrong. If you don't read these words properly, make up your own.
God doesn't care what you say. It's how you say it, how you feel,
and your children will respond."
Now, I have to say this myself. There were certain things I
never did. I never blessed my children. I just really wasn't too
comfortable with that — a great loss. But you could teach a tremen
dous amount of Judaism just by the symbolism of the Friday night
Kiddush service, the sanctif ication of the mother lighting the
lights, the way the table's set. Ideally, the father should be
coming home from shul. The blessing over the wine, the bread,
blessing your children, a special meal — just a great symbolism.
If you observed Sabbath at least one quarter of the way you really
should, a lot of our problems would be over. Here we have a two— day
weekend in America and we don't observe either day as a Sabbath and
it's a great tragedy.
I've talked to you before about the Polonsky Saga by Charles
Angoff. Well, there are ten books and I've finished five of them
now. The only reason I'm not onto the sixth yet is because none of
the libraries I've approached has that particular volume on the
shelf, but I'll get to it. He talks about his childhood in Boston
in an orthodox setting and how the family began to drift away from
194
Kuhn: orthodoxy. The great tragedy of his father's life was that in
America he had to work on the Sabbath. In fact, it killed him.
The son does the same thing, but it doesn't hurt him anywhere
near as much. The reform Jews have gotten away from it because
we probably weren't ever with it.
It's a very, very simple thing because from the observance of
the Sabbath everything else flows — reading, going to services,
being an example to your children, particularly in your relation
ship with other people and your relationship with your family.
That's the most important — in relationships with other people —
and having your religion as a guide, so that when tough decisions
have to be made, you follow the precepts of your faith.
All this, of course, depends on how much you know, so that the
constancy of study is the main thing. In the old days, you had
the example of the generations before you, and here we don't have
that example. We're finding the kids know more now than their
parents did, and this is something that I didn't think would ever
happen. But we're reversing the trend toward watering down and
assimilation, primarily because of this Israel summer trip experi
ence, preparing for it, following up on it, so the kids are really,
in many cases, better Jews than their parents are.
This, of course, causes a conflict. The child doesn't want to
criticize his parents, and the teacher doesn't want to criticize
the parents, even indirectly. So you have to teach the kids to
criticize their parents in a very impersonal way, in a humble way,
hoping that they don't do something like that to their own children,
Nobody's going to be perfect. But you can't miss as many genera
tions as we did without it coming out in a bad way.
The Role of the Religious School
Dorfman: What do you see as the role of the religious schools?
Kuhn: The religious school has to take the lead because the parents are
either unable or unwilling to do it. The school should really be
pressing for more time from the parents. It should be asking the
parents to help them with the reading program, on field trips, on
helping the classroom to be attractive. You can either do this on
a formal basis, on a whole-school basis, or a skillful teacher can
do it on his or her own. Many parents will go along, particularly
if they had a good religious school education themselves. You have
to remind them that, after all, "These are your children, not my
children."
195
Kuhn: Lots of times you throw up your hands and say that nothing can
be done, but that's not true. We cannot afford the luxury of being
pessimistic. Every year, every Sunday, it starts all over again.
You can always make it better. After all, if you compare the
impressions in any kind of a school, it's not what you forget that's
important; it's what you remember. In a way, if you're having a
nonintense education, as a one-day-a-week school must provide, it's
really attitudes that you're trying to build up. Of course, in
Judaism the primary attitude relates to the concept of God, or of
a supreme being, and somehow the feeling that follows, that there
is a moral order in the universe.
Now, if you want to send a child to a Hebrew day school, followed
by Hebrew high school, maybe by even going on to yeshiva or seminary,
that's something else. There's just no way on a one-day-a-week
basis, even supplemented by several years of after-school bar
mitzvah training, that you can impart any significant amount of
knowledge that's going to stick with them. Even Hebrew is not going
to stick with you unless you use it.
But the impressions will stick with you if they're pleasant ones.
And what do most people remember with the greatest of pleasure? A
seder in a grandma's home, right? That's so gorgeous; it's almost
beyond description what that means. And yet a lot of kids haven't
ever had that — had a grandmother and grandfather that live here.
Grandparents may still be in New York and the rest of the family
came out here.
Then we have the parents who just won't do it, and this is why
it's such a sin that every congregation has, on the second night
of Passover, the congregational seder for the people who just never
got around to it the first night. I just think that's terrible
that a mother wouldn't do that for her child, for herself or her
husband. I admit, of course, that in every congregation there are
some members whose life situations are such that they could rarely,
if ever, attend a home seder. It is for them, of course, that the
congregational seder is primarily intended. But any seder where
the number attending is so large that not everyone gets to read a
portion of the Haggadah is too institutionalized for me.
When I was at Beth El (I think I may have said this before) there
were so many fathers who couldn't do this, even on a model seder
basis. They just didn't feel they knew how to be a father in front
of fifteen or twenty children and, yet, there's no way you can do it
wrong I
So the school has to be the leader . And who in the school but
the rabbi? That's what he's for, to teach at all age levels. You
can't lay it off on a principal or director of education or coor
dinator of adult education. The rabbi's got to do it himself, or
have these people help him and be in constant contact and consulta
tion with them.
196
Kuhn: There are many rabbis — I know this — who never meet with their
religious school directors, even though their offices may be
adjacent. Rabbis want to impress adults. But the way to impress
adults, to me, is to impress the kids. They'll tell their parents
about it and they'll remember the rabbi. They'll also be on the
board of directors, and years hence when the rabbi wants his contract
renewed, they won't forget.
Dorfman: How would you reach those who are nonparticipating Jews?
Kuhn: Well, it's a very tough thing. It depends upon the kind of profes
sional personnel you have in the temple. If you have a religious
school director who's full-time, he has time to do it. If he's a
part-time man, as most of them are, they don't have the time. The
rabbi, of course, if he wants to set aside the time, can help.
Mostly it's a matter of meeting congregants in homes or in the
rabbi's study and talking to them about Judaism. Show them an
example; have these people attend a seder in somebody else's home
as guests. They may never have been to a real seder in a real home.
Or they may have been to a very orthodox seder in their great-
grandmother's home and it may have repelled them because of its
length and the adults were expected to read every page of the
Haggadah.
There is no exact formula, except, I think, if people feel the
rabbi and the leaders of the school and congregation are really
interested in them; that's what they really want. If you feel
someone really cares about you, then such an encounter might not
get an immediate response, but it may get a delayed response.
Someone will come along and say, "Well, you were talking about
this last year, and I've been thinking about it, and I think I'm
ready for it now." Caring, consistency, persistency. After all,
you're trying to change the patterns of a lifetime, and that's not
easy.
Dorfman: Can you tell me how your parents made the decision to join a reform
rather than a conservative temple?
Kuhn: I have no idea. I have some thoughts. I don't think they had much
of a religious education themselves. I don't know that for sure.
I never heard them discuss it. I have no idea what religious educa
tion they may have had. I know my father had very little public
school education. My mother went through grammar school. But I
think that when they decided not to live in the Fillmore-McAllister,
this was an expression that they wanted something more modern for
their children.
Now, we were living on California Street near 9th Avenue, and the
Temple was then at 450 Sutter Street, and Sunday school was at
Sutter near Franklin. My father joined Emanu-El in 1922, I think
197
Kuhn: primarily because — I'm sure because — of my two brothers and myself;
he wanted us to be in religious school.
Then, of course, when they built the new Temple at Arguello and
Lake, and Rabbi Newman was here and filling the place every Friday
night — just to be able to go, my father would dress up in his best
tailor-made suit and my mother would go with him and this was a big
thing. My father used to just glow.
But it never occurred to me that he might have joined anywhere
else. First of all, in this neighborhood, I didn't know of any
thing else. Temple Beth Sholom hadn't been started yet. There was
a group of Sephardim who met on 4th Avenue. But, really, there were
no other places in this neighborhood. But I really don't know.
Maybe he just wanted to be a member of the best, as he interpreted
it. It may have been a matter of prestige, just like somebody
might join the Masonic Lodge or B'nai B'rith or something like that.
Maybe being a member of Temple Emanu-El to him was a matter of
koved. I don't know.
198
XI FORTY YEARS AS A JEWISH WELFARE VOLUNTEER
Dorfman: How have your years of work with the- Jewish Welfare Federation
affected the organization?
Kuhn: Well, remember that I worked for almost four decades as a volunteer.
Do you mean that?
Dorfman: Yes, those years.
Kuhn: I think the first effect would be to demonstrate that you can become
a leader in the Federation and in the community by dedication and
work and not necessarily by having inherited or acquired wealth. I
really think I was perhaps the first "common man" to rise to a
position of leadership, and I think that being campaign chairman or
co-chairman is every bit as important and prestigious as being the
president of the Federation. Of course, I served on the board of
directors for ten years. So first, I think, would be showing that
the Federation wasn't an organization whose leadership came entirely
from the moneyed classes.
Secondly, the quality of my work. Even when I was a volunteer I
tried to do a professional job. I never had anybody write my speeches
for me. Sometimes someone in the public relations department wrote
a speech without my knowing it and put my words in my mouth in
articles they inserted in the Jewish Bulletin. [Chuckles] I'd read
it Friday morning and I'd find out to my amazement that during the
preceding week I'd said such-and-such.
I tried by application and hard work to do a really professional
job. In the case, for example, of the review of Mt. Zion's capital
needs in the capital fund drive of 1960, our committee met every
other week, perhaps for a full year. We could have done it on a
much shorter basis, but it wouldn't have been anywhere near as
professional a job. So I think the professional aspect of the work,
plus the capacity for doing a lot of things all together — sometimes
I was not only chairman of the social planning committee, but I
199
Kuhn: would chair some of its subcommittees, sometimes in a special ad
hoc situation. You really had to have a knowledge of the community
and the personalities involved.
[The following inserted material was gathered during an editing
session with Marshall H. Kuhn at his home at 30 7th Avenue, San
Francisco, on March 27, 1978.]
Dorfman: You were going to come back to some incidents similar to those
relating to your role in the men's club at Temple Emanu-El.
Kuhn: If you will recall, about the time of World War II and for years
before that, the Temple and I were almost inseparable in my own
mind. That was really my family, Temple Emanu-El. As the years
went on, I found myself being more and more critical. And I
brought out some of these incidents, not only with regard to Rabbi
Reichert and my role in the men's club, but also the instance where
my wife had become vice-president of the Sisterhood and, just as I
had been passed over for the presidency of the men's club, she was
passed over for the presidency of the Sisterhood. We never really
found out why.
She was hurt, I was hurt, and while the argument may go that you
should get over these hurts, nonetheless it's somewhat like the
razor's edge. It's a very thin line between love and hate. If
you love something deeply and it hurts you, I don't think there's
anybody on the outside who can tell you when your particular emo
tional response should terminate. You can argue between rationality
and emotion, but emotion is usually the controlling factor.
There were other things that came along, but I didn't assume that
I was right in everything. But, nonetheless, at the time that I'm
dictating this, when I read [in The Temple Chronicle of Temple
Emanu-El] that I'm a long-time leader of Temple Emanu-El, and I
realize that I have never been a director of the Temple or an
officer, I wonder how my leadership has been made manifest. I
assume it's just because of my role with the children, hundreds of
them, and the position for which I've stood, even though I stood
alone. And I don't regret that at all, because I'm a product of
my education in Judaism, which says that if you're right, then
stick by your position. There's absolutely no point in changing to
be in the majority.
My old friend Joe Morrison used to say that if two men are on the
board of directors and one always agrees with the other, that man
is superfluous. So I've mellowed quite a bit about this. I realize
that I became campaign co-chairman of the Federation, in spite of
my not having been good enough to be president of the Emanu-El men's
club. It gave me food for thought as to which organization was
really more important in Jewish life. But that's water under the
dam.
[end of insert]
199a
128TH ANNUAL MEETING
CONGREGATION EMANU-EL
JANUARY JL7, 1978
President Myer S. Kahn, Presiding
6:30-7:15 Reception
Invocation . . t «.. 4 .«.....». Rabbi Arnold Magid
DINNER
* * *
Request for motion to dispense with reading of the minutes of the last
annual meeting and to approve the actions of the Board during the
past year Myer S. Kahn
Report of Nominating Committee
and Election of Directors. Dr. Ernest S. Rogers
* * *
President's Report Mr. Kahn
Introduction of New Officers. Mr. Kahn
Presentations to Retiring Directors . Mrs. Oscar Rushakoff
Special Presentation to Marshall Kuhn . . . . . Harold L. Levy
* * *
A Musical Interlude Cantor Joseph L. Portnoy
* * *
Program Honoring Rabbi Joseph Asher Mrs. Daniel Stone
and Daniel E. Stone
Presentation. ...«.**•«.*......•*.••*•• Mrs. Rushakoff
Response ....................... Rabbi Asher
* * *
..ADJOURNMENT
199b
INTRODUCTION TO PRESENTATION FOR MARSHALL KUHN
by Myer S. Kahn
This evening it is with great pleasure that the Temple is presenting a
special award to one of its most dedicated members. As far as I can ascertain,
this is the first time in the history of the temple that this honor has been
conferred on anyone other than a member of the Board of Directors. We are
honoring our friend, colleague, and devoted member of the congregation,
MARSHALL KUHN. Unfortunately, due to illness, Marshall cannot be with us
this evening, but we are delighted that his wife, Caroline, and his daughters,
Alyson and Nancy, and son Bruce are present. Incidentally, this is being
taped so Marshall will know what we are saying behind his back.
Much as I regret that Marshall is not here, I must admit it probably saves
me from some embarrassment. Marshall and I started Emanu-El religious school
in the same first grade and went on to be confirmed together. Were he here
with his encyclopedic memory, it is quite likely he would remind me of some
better to be forgotten episodes in our youthful escapades. He would
undoubtedly refer to the times we were ejected from class for causing
disturbance or, worse still, he would allude to the baskets I missed in
crucial games when this Guild Hall was the religious school gymnasium.
It is particularly appropriate that another dedicated member of the
congregation make the presentation. Harold Levy, a life long member of our
Temple, a former Board member, a devoted friend of mine and a devoted friend
of Marshall's.
199c
The Temple Chronicle of
Temple Emanu-El, San
Francisco, California
199d
CAROLINE KUKN'S STATEMENT OF ACCEPTANCE OF PRESENTATION
TO MARSHALL KUHN
Marshall has truly enjoyed his years of service at Temple Emanu-El
as a teacher, principal, basketball coach, Cub Master, and counselor to
many. Kis trips over the years to Mt . Tamalpais, the Mother Lode, and
elsewhere with numerous confirmation classes remain a highlight in his
book of memories, particularly in this kind of weather. Neither snow,
nor rain, nor hail, nor taking the wrong trail ever stopped the happy
hikers from following their leader. As I look around this room I see
many families who have shared in these memorable adventures.
We are especially grateful to Harold Levy for his beautiful words
based on years of friendship dating back to the days when they were
students together at the Sunday school on Sutter Street. Some of you
present this evening were also a part of these years.
On behalf of our family I would like to thank the congregation for
this beautiful expression of gratitude to my Marshall. It will hang in
our home as a constant reminder of the beauty of our temple and the role
it has played in all of our lives.
Thank you.
200
Kuhn: Now, then, as far as my professional career with the Federation
is concerned, I think what I had learned, as a volunteer, of the
make-up of the community and the personalities involved — my knowl
edge and friendship with these people stood me in good stead in the
sense that I was one of the senior members of the staff. After all,
our top professional leadership in the Federation is quite young.
Rabbi Lurie is in his early or middle thirties, and I remember
when he and I took a group to Israel in 1974, and we were staying
at the King David Hotel. After breakfast he went back to our room
to get a camera or something, and then a few minutes later I went
back to get a sweater, and the maid said, "Your son was just here."
[Chuckles]
So this is what I mean. It's sort of an older voice, a more
mature judgment, the judgment of someone who has lived in the com
munity nearly all his life and knows pretty much what's likely to
work here or not work here, even if it might work somewhere else
in the country. Plus, knowing an awful lot of seemingly unrelated
and useless information about everything.
Effecting Change in the Jewish Welfare Federation
Dorfman: What changes did you bring about in the Jewish Welfare Federation?
Kuhn: Changes? Well, that's a difficult thing to know. When I was
involved in the social planning process for many years, we had
developed a pattern of reviewing every agency every year, at least
with respect to some aspects of its service, and even though we
might look at the spectrum of services in any given year and say
that nothing really had changed over the years, actually plenty
had changed. Organizations had gone out of business. New ones
have taken their place. There has been a great deal of change.
Now, I participated in every one of those changes to some degree.
I would say with pardonable pride, I think, that we have the Jewish
Vocational Service today because I persisted for a long time to
bring it about. It fills a vital need and I think it was overdue.
But it took a lot of fighting to get it done. I think I made a
definite contribution to the college programs that we support, not
just through the Federation but through my activity in B'nai B'rith-
Hillel. I know I made contributions to Mt. Zion because, having
gotten involved in that year-long study in 1958 and "59, I got to
know really every square inch of that hospital. Our committee had
to.
[end tape 9, side A; begin tape 9, side B]
201
Kuhn: Over the years, I would say that in some way I've touched every
single agency we have had one or more times, every one of them. I
was involved with studies of Homewood Terrace, which is now being
merged into the Jewish Family and Children's Service. I was in on
the study of the Emanu-El Residence Club at the time it was phasing
out. With just about every single agency there seemed to be some
special situation which required a review by the Federation, repre
senting the community; that is, the donors.
No agency by itself can do an adequate self -study. There has to
be some input from people who are more objective, who can stand
back and see how the agency relates to the whole complex of agencies
in the community. So, therefore, I not only knew the program of
each agency intimately, but I also knew its professional personnel,
its lay board of directors, and where some of the bodies were
buried.
As a matter of fact, we had a study of the Hebrew Free Loan
Association, which is a marvelous organization. Its concept is
just superb, but it really has always been more or less controlled
by the more traditional Jews, conservative and orthodox, at least
until recently. So, therefore, the Federation has never had a
really full understanding of the agency and has never really sup
ported it to the degree to which the agency feels it should be
supported.
In other words, their directors feel they should get more of
their operating expenses from the Federation and not have to depend
upon income earned on those assets that happen not to be loaned out
at the moment and therefore are not earning interest. It's a funny
thing. If Hebrew Free Loan has a certain amount of assets which
are lent to individuals and groups at no interest, obviously this
is a different situation from when the Association has money
available which is not on loan, but which can be invested and thus
increase the corpus. But to understand this nuance takes some
sophistication.
So we began this study and Ben Blumenthal (may he rest in peace)
said, "Young man..." (And he points his finger at me.) "...I've
been on the board of directors of this organization for thirty-
eight years." I said, "That's too long." Well, I didn't make any
points with him that way, but I believe my statement, although I
had phrased it poorly, was true. Now all Federation agencies are
much less dominated by directors who have served terms of excessive
length. At that time there were organizations in the community,
including congregations, that never had any board turnover.
But lately the attorney general of California and the Registry of
Charitable Trusts have taken a dim view about self -perpetuating
boards of directors. The most common provision today in every
202
Kuhn: organization I know of, every nonprofit organization, is the policy
that a director may serve two terms consecutively of a maximum of
three years each, after which he has to go off the board of directors
for at least one year before being eligible to come back.
The Sierra Club actually made this change in 1970. We had members
on the Sierra Club board, Ansel Adams and Richard Leonard among
them, who had been continuously on the board for over thirty years.
Well, this made them very knowledgeable, but it really didn't allow
for any of the young blood coming up in the organization whose mem
bership was rapidly expanding. So Leonard and Adams themselves
moved and seconded the motion which, when carried, put them off the
board. You might call this parliamentary hara-kiri.
Some of the ways to solve this problem, of course, are to create
advisory boards or to upgrade long-time board members to honorary
status, so long as they don't think they're being kicked upstairs,
and this is a very delicate process.
Dorfman: I'm sure it is. Would you tell me, please, what you think you gave
up to make the contributions you did?
Kuhn: Do you mean as a volunteer?
Dorfman: As a volunteer and as a professional.
Kuhn: As a volunteer, I didn't give up anything. Well, yes, I did. I
gave up a lot of time with my family, too much time. I don't know
if I told this story before in this interview, but when I had been
chairman of the Federation campaign for two years and I had made
extensive trips overseas, I was convinced that the best way to
impress upon our community the absolute necessity of insuring
Jewish survival by financial gifts was to talk to the donors. My
talking on a group basis was much more effective than even talking
on an individual basis. I'm a much better solicitor in a small
group than on a one-to-one basis.
Well, that meant that I was out all the time. I had breakfast
meetings, lunch meetings, cocktail meetings, dinner meetings, and
evening meetings. My son Bruce, who had just learned to read, came
up one night and he had my date book. I think he was about seven.
It was a Tuesday night and he said, "You know what, Dad? You're
going to be home a week from Saturday night." And the next day I
wrote letters of resignation to twelve organizations, Jewish and
non-Jewish, and said, "I just can't do this to my family."
It hit me like a ton of bricks because I was also a religious
school principal, which is the most time-demanding of all, and that
was a semi-professional commitment, not a volunteer one, and it was
203
Kuhn: just too much. I didn't have any time for my family or myself. No
matter how effectively you do it — and I was very skillful at using
dictating equipment, the phone, memos, automobiles — there's still a
limit, because all of this came on top of my daily work, which most
of the time was Blue Shield. So I did make a sacrifice.
Now, I'm not saying that if I had to do it over again I wouldn't
have done it. I think I wouldn't have been so subject to the feel
ing that I might be indispensable to some organization because,
after all, when people see that you are an effective volunteer,
they want to latch onto you. This is why for so long I wouldn't
join B'nai B'rith, because these friends of mine said, "We're going
to get you, Kuhn. We know what a worker you are." 1 figured, "By
God, you're not going to get me." I was right, but eventually even
they got to me.
Dorfman: Do you have any regrets?
Kuhn: No, regrets are ridiculous. The only regret I have in my life is
that my mother and father never had the opportunity to meet my wife
or our children, and vice versa.
Camp Tawonga Remembrances
Dorfman: You mentioned earlier that you were a charter camper at Camp
Tawonga. Can you tell me about your experiences?
Kuhn: Well, in the first place, Camp Tawonga — not with that name, but as
a camp sponsored by the YMHA — started in 1921. My two brothers went
to camp that year at Ben Lomond, and my parents and I drove down one
weekend. I remember sleeping on the cushion of the front seat of
our Model-T Ford. Then in 1925 Tawonga started at Lakeport on a
rented site.
I had never been a camper before. I was eight and you were
supposed to be a minimum of ten years. My two brothers were going,
so the camp administration made an exception. They had a few other
campers as young as I. There were two sessions of two weeks each
and here we were coming to a camp that was really not prepared for
us.
The first two weeks, I and everybody else spent part of our day
preparing the camp site — rolling the softball diamond, the croquet
court, and all this business, you see — so the kids who came the
second two weeks could enjoy it. But my brothers and I were staying
the whole full four weeks.
204
Kuhn:
Dorfman:
Kuhn:
So when all the facilities were ready, I said, "Can I play
croquet now?" They said, "No, you're too young." I said, "How
come I'm not too young to help build it, but I'm too young to
play on it? What do you mean, too young to play?" I was just
furious and, if you want to know the truth, I'm still mad!
Well, the next year I was nine and it was about the same thing,
except we set up camp at Cisco on the Yuba River. The camp site
was beautiful, and swimming in the Yuba River was one of the
great thrills of my life. We swam every morning and afternoon,
and sometimes at night when there was a good moon we would have
a moonlight swim. That was a lot of fun.
My oldest brother, Mort, decided that he wouldn't go back to
camp after the first year because he had been the wood chopper
and the bugler, and the day we left Lakeport they asked him to
play assembly, and he had already packed his bugle down in the
bottom of his duffel bag. They made him dig down for it and he
swore,
"I'll never come back here."
In the second year, my middle brother, HAK, and I went to
Tawonga and he really had a racket. I never saw him dressed in
campers' garb. He wore my father's old bathrobe and hat around
the camp. He conned everybody into thinking that he was indispen
sable because his job was to trim the wicks on the coal oil lamps
in the tents. Finally, the camp director, Louis Blumenthal, was
just fed up with this and he grabbed my brother's hat and threw
it in the campfire one night. So my brother HAK wouldn't go back
the next year. That meant that in 1927 I'd be all by myself and
I figured, "To heck with it, it's not that much fun," although I
must admit I did have a lot of fun.
The memories of those two years are very vivid in my mind. I
know a lot of fellows still who went to camp. I recall a lot of
incidents. But basically it really wasn't fair because I loved
sports and when they told me, "You can't play softball because
you're too young, but it's okay to help roll the field" — that's
dumb.
What kinds of activities did you participate in?
Oh, swimming. I learned to swim in Clear Lake. We had to walk
what seemed about a mile — I guess it was less — in this tremendous
summer heat, with gnats, and then we swam in the lake. They had
been doing some blasting on the eastern side of Clear Lake and
the dead fish from the blasting would float into our swimming area.
I became a beginner swimmer in 1925 and an advanced swimmer in 1926
at Cisco. That was great.
205
Kuhn: I had a great counselor, Andy Cole, whom I admired tremendously.
I remember one night when I couldn't sleep he brought me a cup of
cold water to my cot. Years later, at a Federation dinner which I
chaired, I said, "Now, here is Andy Cole. He was my counselor at
Camp Tawonga. Do you think if he had known then, as a Stanford
man, that I would grow up and go to Cal that he would have brought
me that cold cup of water?"
Looking back, I don't think I really had the kind of disposition
that a "good camper" needs in that environment.
I remember my parents had gone to Yosemite in 1926 for the first
time and they drove from Yosemite to Cisco to visit us one day.
That was a great thrill and so was going home after a month — clean
sheets, a real tub bath, having your mother's cooking again. Those
were just sensational.
A lot of the fellows that I know now went to camp after Tawonga
moved to Tahoe. They think, of course, that because Tahoe was sort
of a permanent site that Tawonga started in 1927, but actually
Tawonga began in 1925.
Dorfman: It moved to Tahoe then?
Kuhn: It moved to Tahoe in '27. It may have had one or two different
sites at Tahoe, but it ended up about four miles south of the lake
at Myers. Then, after World War II, they sold that site. They
didn't have a resident camp until maybe ten years ago, when the
Jewish Center bought the Columbia Park Boys Camp in Stanislaus
National Forest, which is adjacent to Yosemite National Park. I
remember talking at that time to the executive director of the
Center, Irwin Gold, who of course had come from the East, and he
asked, "Tawonga! What kind of a name is Tawonga for Jewish kids?"
"It's an Indian name." Irwin was adamant, "This camp is going to
have a Jewish name." I teased him and asked, "Do you want to bet?"
As you know, the camp was renamed Tawonga.
Dorfman: Why was it named that?
Kuhn: Because there is a long tradition in American camping that venerates
Indian lore, so many, many camps bear Indian names, either actual
Indian names or pseudo-Indian names.
For example, let's consider the Campfire Girls. The San Francisco
Council has a camp called Caniya. The Campfire Girls' motto is
"Wohelo," which derives from the first two letters of the words
"work," "health," and "love."
206
Kuhn: When I served on the Campfire board, I announced at a meeting,
"I've got an adult motto, 'Wiwoso.'" The board asked, "From what
Indian source does that derive?" I responded, "From the first two
letters of 'wine,1 'women,' and 'song!'" [Laughter]
Dorfman: Were there other activities at Tawonga?
Kuhn: Oh, yes. We'd go on overland hikes, have a campfire every night,
sing, and then someone would tell some grisly stories which would
keep us awake half the night. I was so gullible I even participated
in a snipe hunt. I'm sure you know what a snipe hunt is.
The first year I made an ass of myself. There were wild turkeys
running around our site at Clear Lake, so the counselors said, "If
you put a little salt on their tails, you can catch them that way."
So I went around like a maniac sprinkling with the salt shaker while
running after these turkeys, with everybody howling at me. Oh, boy!
Then I had a kid in my tent named Aaron Rubino. He was a char
acter. If you got a package from home, he had opened it before you
got to it. Eventually he became such a pest that they sent him
home before his four weeks were up. But they didn't just send him
home. They had a campfire in his honor, and at the campfire they
told what a great guy he was and that the only reason he was being
sent home was because he wouldn't brush his teeth religiously.
Well, this was such a fake!
I had adopted some of my older brothers' swear words, and Louis
Blumenthal, in front of the campfire one night, said that if I
didn't stop swearing he was going to wash my mouth out with soap
in front of the whole camp.
Dorfman: Was it ever necessary?
Kuhn: No, no. His warning scared me. You got up in the morning, you
washed and had your breakfast, and you made your bed (which was
straw ticking inside of a cotton bag), saluted the flag, and pre
pared for inspection. You had your morning activities — sports of
some kind, playing softball — or you watched them, and then you had
swimming. Then you returned to camp, had lunch, and rested for an
hour.
This rest was for several reasons. First, the temperature was
tremendously hot in midday. Secondly, the American National Red
Cross had mandated that if you swam less than an hour after eating,
you would get stomach cramps and drown. Of course, this was later
proven to be completely false. Third, the enforced rest period
gave you time to write home to your folks and to eat raisins, thus
combatting constipation, which camp directors considered the
eleventh plague.
207
Kuhn: Then you had your afternoon activities, dinner, and a campfire.
I really liked the campfire. I loved to sing. I loved those
grisly stories. They would get a counselor up in the hills and
the storyteller would relate a tale about how this Indian spirit
had become liberated, at which point the counselor up on the hill
would give out with unearthly howls. The campers, particularly
the younger ones, would be paralyzed with fear. Then this counselor
would wander through camp all during the night moaning and howling.
[Laughter]
Dorfman: I think it would be interesting if you told me what a snipe hunt is.
Kuhn: A snipe hunt! The counselors tell you that there's a small bird
called a snipe and that a flock of them congregates on the top of
a hill above camp. The counselors then inform you that one of them
is going to chase the snipe down the hill, and all you have to do
to catch them is to wait at the bottom of the hill with a burlap
sack, and you can trap a snipe easily. Then the counselors roll
some big rocks down the hill; you trap these rocks in your sack and
you think you've got a bird in there, but it's only just a rock.
It's a little cruel, but it's harmless. It's like college hazing.
Actually, of course, there is a well known bird named the snipe.
Dorfman: Where did you have your meals?
Kuhn: The first year, I don't know. We must have had a mess tent. The
second year we had a very fine eating arrangement, a very fine mess
tent. I remember one day it was pouring torrential rain and this
counselor, Andy Cole, said that we didn't have to eat in the mess
tent. We would go there and bring the food from the mess tent to
our tent. I remember they had blueberry pudding. I have no idea
why I remember that. But that was a big day; our tent group was
special because we were the only ones allowed to do this.
The food was good. Really, we shouldn't have gotten any extra
food from home, but Jewish parents always seem to want to supplement
their children's camp diets with cookies, candy, and other snack
foods.
There was a camper my age named Earl Hoffman and he won the award
as Honor Camper. He had no demerits and I hated his guts. Years
later, when we both were at Lowell, I found out he was really a
very nice fellow. I told him the story about his being the Honor
Camper and he actually apologized for it, saying that he was so
young and inexperienced that he lacked the ingenuity to acquire any
demerits!
Dorfman: Did you ever spend time at any other Jewish camps?
208
Kuhn: No, no other camps at all, which made it obvious that I would be
the choice of the Camp Fire Girls to be chairman of their camping
committee.
Camp Swig
Dorfman: You promised to tell about your involvement in Camp Swig.
Kuhn: In the late '40s, Rabbi Raphael H. Levine of Temple De-Hirsch [Sinai],
Seattle, Washington, started what was called the Jewish Youth Confer
ence. The first year it was held at Zephyr Cove, a Presbyterian
campground on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe. For the next several
years it was held at Asilomar. These were encampments primarily for
children of confirmation age. Someone got the idea that, one, we
should have our own camp, and, two, that by having our own camp we
could involve children of a much broader age span. Now, the credit
for actually bringing this to fruition is due to Ben Swig.
He located this property at Saratoga; it was on 203 acres. It
was owned by Kathleen Norris, the novelist, who had it as a summer
place, and each summer she would bring her entire family from all
over the United States to spend the summer with her. When they all
grew up and there was no more need for the place, she put it on the
market for $50,000. Ben put up $20,000, of which $10,000 was a gift,
and the other $10,000 was a loan. We took out a note with Mrs.
Norris for the balance of $30,000, at 2 percent, which was such a
low rate of interest as to have us classify her as a Semitophile.
Anyway, they formed a corporation called the Jewish Religious
Educational Foundation. Ben was active; also Albert Axelrod, the
judge; one or more men from each reform congregation in Northern
California; Al Sider from Stockton; men from Oakland, Fresno, San
Jose, and Sherith Israel, of course; and eventually it got started.
But camp, as constituted, was really not satisfactory for our
purposes, because if you have your own family there, no matter how
big they are, there is nothing like the load of others visiting.
So the camp had to be improved. From endless fund-raising drives,
they put in a program building in memory of Rabbi Stern of Oakland.*
They built a new pool; they built a whole new camp for the summer
Hebrew program, Camp Solel. Much of the land was unusable because
a lot of it headed on a sheer slope down the canyon to Stevens
Creek and there was a lot of poison oak on the way down there.
In the first few years, for example, the director each summer would
be either a rabbi who was the Union of Hebrew Congregations regional
rabbi in this area, or a visiting rabbi. They always called them by
their first names — Rabbi Bill, Rabbi Joe, and so on. Eventually —
it took a long time — they got a full-time camp director, which they
have now.
Rabbi Samuel G. Broude of Temple Sinai, Oakland, explained that a
music room in the program building was dedicated to Rabbi Stern.
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Kuhn: Now, the camp was open to all reform congregations up and down
the whole Pacific Coast and they came from the whole coast, includ
ing those from the Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles, which
had its own Camp Hess-Kramer. Over the years, I think the camp has
gotten a much better quality in its programs, much more participa
tion, and is a genuine factor in the educational process.
It does have certain weaknesses, however. One of them is that
the camp never lets the religious school know which kids went to
camp and what they learned. So that the teacher of that child next
year has no idea that this child had any kind of a special experience
that would even help the teacher teach other children.
Secondly, Temple Emanu-El, which is the biggest temple, concen
trates so heavily on its summer trip to Israel for the confirmands
that the number of children it sends to Camp Swig is very, very
minimal. They're in the middle of a fund-raising drive right now,
not only to improve the camp for children, but also to make it
suitable for an adult conference center. It's also been used for
nonreform groups, which involves kashruthing the kitchen at each
time. It's an absolutely spectacular setting among the redwoods.
It's been a really great improvement.
At one time it was called Camp Saratoga, denoting its geographic
location, and then all the Union camps throughout the country began
adopting the names of the principal benefactor. Ben Swig certainly
was responsible, not just for the first large donation, but for
having the imagination to put the concept together, which, of course,
is Ben's specialty.
At one time the telephone company put in new exchanges in the
Saratoga area. Now, the camp was owned by the Union of American
Hebrew Congregations. Believe it or not, as a coincidence, the
new number assigned to camp was Union 7.
Dorfman: I understand that you possess a remarkable memory. Can y^ou tell me
of some of your experiences relating to this unusual skill?
Kuhn: Did I discuss with you Menninger's statement about memory?
Dorfman: No, you didn't.
Kuhn: At the Oral History Association Annual Colloquium in 1974 in Grand
Teton National Park, our featured speaker one night was Dr. Robert
Menninger, one of the second generation of the famous family of
psychiatrists. He talked about the nature of memory, how little we
really know about it, how we know it's a good thing because if we
didn't have memory we would go out of the house in the morning and
wouldn't know where to come back. We can't even explain why our
210
Kuhn: grandfather can tell us everything he did on January 21, 1912, but
he has no idea where he was yesterday.
After he spoke, a group of us gathered around him and asked him
individual questions. One fellow was sort of baiting him, although
I have no idea why. He said, "Come on, Dr. Menninger. You're not
telling us the whole story. What is memory?" And Menninger gave
him, from a Jewish standpoint (he's not Jewish), a classic answer —
not just the words, but the way in which he said them. He said,
"Memory is survival."
That's as true a statement as I'd ever heard. It was first
impressed on me when I started visiting Europe, North Africa, and
Israel to study Jewish life in those areas. A cardinal sin of a
modern Jew is to forget. All of us, Jewry collectively, must remem
ber where we came from, where we are now, how we got there, and
what obligations we have, to insure that "never again" are not just
meaningless words.
Now, why my memory is the way it is, I have no idea. I don't
think I do any exercises for it. I just think that certain things
that have happened during my lifetime have impressed me and I have
tried to use everything I've learned. For example, as I used to
drive around, I didn't listen to my car radio. Instead, I composed
speeches in my head, primarily for Federation audiences, although
I've spoken for a couple of dozen different organizations over the
years. I have tried to illustrate all of my talks, no matter where,
with personal experiences from childhood or adulthood. Now, some
of the things that have happened to me have been very, very meaning
ful. Some have been extremely humorous.
For years I assumed that other people had these same kind of
experiences happen to them, but perhaps they don't. Possibly I've
just been very fortunate, remembering something that happened in
school, or in play, or working for the Anglo-California National
Bank, or serving in the Navy, or working for Blue Shield, or being
active in volunteer organizations. Just lots of memorable things
have happened. They've impressed me so much that I've repeated
them to others. The more I've told these stories, the more I have
been able to derive from them in moral, spiritual, and human values.
How my memory focuses on some of this miscellaneous information,
trivia, and minutiae, I don't really know, because I don't make any
conscious efforts to accumulate this kind of subject matter. I would
be a rank loser in any TV general information quiz, because I don't
try to commit anything to memory unless it has a meaning for me.
Dorfman: There is an incident from your childhood that relates to Samuel
Reshevsky.
211
Kuhn: Yes.
Dorfman: Could you tell me about that?
Kuhn: In 1970 or '71, the world chess championship was being played in
Iceland between Boris Spassky of Russia and Bobby Fischer of the
United States. Sports Illustrated carried an article about this
match which said that each night the TV stations of New York would
have an explanation of the day's play by one of America's chess
masters. It listed them under channels and one of them was named
Samuel Reshevsky, a name which somehow struck a note in my mind.
So I looked up his name and address in my New York phone book,
which I had purloined from a hotel during the previous visit to
New York.
I wrote to him approximately as follows: "Dear Mr. Reshevsky,
Recently I read about you in Sports Illustrated. I recall that
when I was a boy of about four or five my parents took me to the
Hotel St. Francis so I could look through a door at a slightly
older boy in velvet pants who was playing thirty-six simultaneous
chess matches against grown men, and winning or drawing every one.
I gathered from my parents that some of this lad's genius might
rub off on me by osmosis. Now, they also said that he was one of
a kind. My question is, could that have been you?"
I got an immediate response saying, "Dear Mr. Kuhn, You have a
phenomenal memory. That boy was indeed me, and my wife says I am
really one of a kind." Now, I have no idea how the name of Samuel
Reshevsky could be stored in my brain for over fifty years, unless,
of course, I am still waiting for his genius to rub off on me.
Dorfman: It certainly is unusual. Were there other such incidences?
Kuhn: Oh, they come up now and then, they do. I just can't think of any
at the moment. Sometimes as you get older your memory isn't as
good as when you were younger. Sometimes, to recall something, you
have to think about it very hard, to physically concentrate on it.
Somehow, the nervous impulses or circuit or whatever it is that
constitutes memory will actually bring the fact you are seeking to
your mind if you really devote your total mental energies to the
problem. Then all of a sudden, maybe a few hours later, the light
comes, whether it's a name, a date, or other bit of information.
We really know so little of how this functions, how this whole
random access of the brain operates. But there's no question that
the human brain is the most sophisticated computer ever made.
Dorfman: Has this unusual memory been a help to you?
212
Kuhn: When you say help to me — it's a help in the sense that it has given
me great personal satisfaction, particularly when people come up and
they say to me, and scores of people have said this to me, "Marshall,
1 just bet somebody that you'll know the answer to this question."
And I'll know the answer because somehow it's stored somewhere in my
brain.
It's a pleasure if you can come up with this sort of answer,
particularly if you're the only person in your circle who does know
it, or if you don't know the answer you can be helpful by knowing
how the answer can be obtained. I think a large part of what educa
tion should teach you is how to get the answers you may not have.
Granted, one reason that I know the answers to a lot of strictly
local questions is because I've lived in San Francisco almost all
of my life.
I must confess that having a good memory is very pleasant and
satisfying. I don't think it has any supreme practical value, except
in my speaking engagements where I have access to all these fascinat
ing incidents in my life. Their essence I feel very strongly, and as
I relive and retell these stories my memory is further reinforced.
I'll tell you one story that I was telling my daughter the other
day. I was at a party a year or two ago with people all of whom
were about eight years younger than I was, but whom I had taught in
religious school. One of them, Stanley Weiner, now a CPA, was the
younger brother of a fellow I went to high school and college with.
I used to eat at their home quite a bit after my mother passed away.
Stanley said to me at this party, "You told a story once at our
home that's been our favorite family joke ever since. I said, "What
was that?" He said, "Well, my mother said that she was going to a
sale in the basement of the Emporium to look for pajamas for me.
Because the packages were all broken open and she was looking to
make up pairs, each pair with a small top but a large bottom, because
I have a big keester, Marshall, you said, 'That's not fair. Who
could use a big top and a small bottom? Only Babe Ruth! '" You would
have to know that Babe Ruth had a tremendous torso and very small
legs.
He just roared at his own story, and I said, "I don't even remem
ber that."
Of course, you have to want to have faith in your memory. I
recall that the only Yiddish words I knew as a child were lasum
saroo, which my mother would say to my father, which means, "Lay
off, already." Some friends challenged me on this, claiming that
my memory wasn't correct. So I wrote to Samuel Kohs, who is a
213
Kuhn: famous Yiddishist and whose son was a camper at Tawonga with me.
I told him this story and he wrote me back and said, "Marshall,
One, you are a hundred percent right. That's exactly what lasum
saroo means. And, two, never distrust your childhood memories.
They are always correct."
Devotion to Jewish Life and Values
Dorfman: Others have had perhaps a more structured Jewish background than
you've had, and yet you've been totally immersed in and totally
devoted to Jewish life and values. Can you tell me how you can
account for this?
Kuhn: No, I really can't, except — I'll take the negative side first,
[end tape 9, side B; begin tape 10, side A]
Kuhn: First we'll go into the negative sense. When I finished religious
school at Emanu-El, there was no such thing as a high school class.
I went to college, and Hillel didn't offer courses, and the only
Judaica on campus was the study of Hebrew. Then, when I got out of
college, I started being active in organizations, and working, and
having a family.
I never really did well going to courses at night. One, I
couldn't seem to arrange to have a given night of the week to be
free for a whole semester. Two, I couldn't stay awake for three
hours from seven to ten. For some courses I did. For Blue Shield
I took a number of courses in prepaid medical care. I took some
Jewish courses, but really not many compared to what I could have
done. Basically it was a biological problem. It had something to
do with my metabolism. I just couldn't stay awake after a full
meal and a full day's work.
Jiut I could do a lot of volunteer work. I could go to meetings,
I could phone, I could type in my basement, because that was active
rather than passive. So I admire greatly people who have taken a
lot of courses. My absorption of Jewish knowledge has been indirect
and also through reading. That leaves a lot of space there because
if you take a course your study is more structured; you have a
chance to have your questions answered and to hear questions of
other students answered. But it just wasn't for me. So, as I say,
it's been an indirect method. Does that cover the question?
Dorfman: Let me ask the question again. Others have had a more structured
Jewish background than you, and yet you have been totally immersed
in and devoted to Jewish life and values. How would you account
for that?
214
Kuhn: Well, 1 think basically it's because I've had more fun being with
people. It doesn't mean I didn't like to read. It just means that
I like being with people more. Now, this has some very bad aspects.
My knowledge of Hebrew is almost nil. I can't read or write it. I
can't speak it. I can't understand it. I follow it in a prayer
book very f alter ingly, because with my language skills, which are
very, very bad, it would have taken so much effort to master Hebrew
that I wouldn't have been able to do anything else.
It was just a choice I made, consciously or unconsciously, that
that would have to be one of the regrets of my life, that I would
have to get my knowledge of Judaica through translation, in spite
of the fact that so many people have said, "Well, you're not going
to get the flavor by reading the material in English." Maybe that's
true for a scholar, but I don't think that's true for the average
reader.
I don't think you really have to be a scholar to devote yourself
to Jewish studies. I can think of so many examples of people who
were leaders in the Jewish community, even though in childhood they
were deprived of any formal Jewish education, sometimes quite con
sciously by their parents. You might wonder how they could in later
life, with hardly any Jewish background, become leaders in the Jewish
community.
The answer is because leadership is far less intellectual than
emotional. You take some of these people and you send them to
Israel or to Morocco or to Germany and something happens to them
that you would hardly predict. There's a song we sang in Sunday
school: "There is a mystic tie that binds the children of the martyr
race." You're not going to flush Jewishness out of their genes that
fast.
On the other hand, some of the most competent scholars I know in
Judaic subjects are really devoid of Judaism as I conceive of it.
They wouldn't contribute to a Jewish charity if their life depended
upon it, or at least to a charity other than one that benefits their
own particular narrow interest. So it's not how much you know; it's
what you do with what you feel. I'm not knocking education at all,
but I don't think it's that primary.
The Satisfaction as a Catalyst
Dorfman: What would you say were the triumphs of such a life?
Kuhn: My life?
215
Dorfman: Of a life so totally involved in Jewish life.
Kuhn: [Pauses] Well, I try not to spend all my energy on patting myself
on the back, but it's a great satisfaction. First of all, you do
see the community change. It's slow, but if you stop and think and
analyze what we've done, how we've tried to meet the needs, we have
kept pace, sometimes not as fast as we'd like or as complete as we'd
like, but there has been movement. And if you've been a part of it,
as I think I have, not just in Jewish organizations but presenting
a Jewish way of doing things and looking at things in the non-Jewish
organizations I've worked in, then you find you have made a contribu
tion.
I can point to certain programs and projects that wouldn't have
happened without me. At least I don't think they would have happened
in quite that way, and it's a satisfaction. I don't think of that
very often because I'm always thinking, "What am I going to do next?"
I haven't run out of ideas at all. It's tough now in my present
situation to implement any of them, but I look forward to what's
going to happen next.
I'm not running down the way others use their leisure, but it
wouldn't have been in the cards for me to be a gambler. I have
never walked into a bar by myself in my life. You could spend a
fortune on that, you know. I don't like spectator sports that much,
even though I was an athlete and interested in and trained in physical
education. It was never as a spectator that I found satisfaction.
But I have found satisfaction in this organizational work because
other people with whom I've come in contact have been very, very
pleasant associates. They form the bulk of our friendships — not
all by any means, but most of them, because you have a commonality
of interests and a fundamental sameness in the way you approach
things, the Jewish point of view.
Dorfman: You said that some programs would not have come into being if not
for you.
Kuhn: Well, in our local Jewish community we would not have had vocational
service as early as we did, perhaps, if I hadn't, as chairman of
social planning, attended the meeting in 1965 when two of the leaders
of the top vocational services came here, Bill Gillman of Chicago and
Maurie Grooman of L.A. They just met with a few of us and told what
vocational services do. I was just absolutely — I had my imagination
inflamed. I kept pushing for this service, or for a study to prove
the need for it, and the Federation resisted. There were times when
I almost gave the whole thing up.
216
Kuhn: I kept on persisting at it and eventually we had two studies.
The first study reached the conclusion that we didn't need the
Jewish vocational service because kids had counseling services
available at their public schools. This is absolutely such a
ridiculous conclusion, because the quality and quantity of coun
seling services in public schools is extremely deficient. The
second study validated the need. We created an agency and it's
been a tremendous success, not just for native born Americans,
but with this whole integration from Russia — getting them jobs,
training them — and this is something we couldn't have accomplished
any other way. So that's a program to which I really feel I made
a substantial contribution.
In the non-Jewish field, building a pool for the Camp Fire
Girls, creating a Young Audiences Week, building a recreation
room for children with bone tuberculosis at San Francisco General
Hospital — a lot of projects of that sort. I think in almost every
organization I involved myself in, there was something that I did
that was really special. I tried to act not just as a routine
board member, but as a catalyst by bringing things together, making
them move — something that would happen that wouldn't happen other
wise.
But I've thought that the role of the catalyst really doesn't
describe what I tried to do. In chemical terms, a catalyst means
a chemical or other agent that causes something to happen without
changing itself. This can't happen with me because I change as a
result of bringing these things together. But I've had the luck
that usually something constructive has always happened.
I led the fund drive for the new camp for the Diabetic Youth
Foundation, Bearskin Meadow. Actually, Dr. Mary Olney, the founder
and camp director, was the spark plug, but she honored me by having
me do this because of my fund-raising activities elsewhere. I
started a cub pack at Temple Emanu-El and brought into scouting
at the Temple, for the first time, nonwhite children.
People say, "Marshall, you must have been involved in every
organization," and I say, "No, I've never done anything directly
for the Mothers' Milk Bank. Indirectly, yes." [Chuckles]
Even at the Strybing Arboretun Society my role was being the
catalyst that started the John Muir Nature Trail, which was just
on the drawing board of the Arboretum. I suggested that they name
the nature trail after John Muir and I helped them raise the money—
$134,000 — and it's being developed. This is from a fellow who
doesn't know one plant from another, except that plant life is a
beautiful thing. The Arboretum is an educational institution and
we have a tremendous educational program.
217
Kuhn: Unfortunately, I'm not qualified for it [chuckles], but I know
it's a good thing, and so as much as the others on our board know
about plants, there should be someone who knows about money. As a
matter of fact, I think I may have told you that at our annual
plant sale, which is our big fund-raising event, a woman stopped me
and said, "Do you sell beech trees inside?" and I said, "Madame, I
am the treasurer of this organization and all I know about trees
is that money doesn't grow on them." [Laughter]
The Disappointments of a Volunteer
Dorfman: I've asked you about the triumphs of a life so deeply concerned
with Jewish values. What were the disappointments?
Kuhn: The disappointments, I think, mainly were taking time away from my
children and my wife. But I can't think of any other disappoint
ments. I never expected that we were going to win every battle,
but I think we won most of them. Just sitting here right now, I
can't think of any case where something good didn't come out of it.
Some of the organizations weren't as pleasant to work with as
others.
But in some cases, as I realize now, I had no business being
there. Young Audiences — I don't know anything about music, but I
know that music education is good for children. This is an
organization that devotes itself exclusively to providing a musical
educational experience for kids in public, private, and parochial
schools. So I helped them raise money.
Even my work as an historian for the Sierra Club is from a
background where I never took a history course in college, and
this, of course, has great advantages which I'll point out later.
Some of your lack of background actually makes you look more
objective when it is known that you are not deeply involved in a
particular issue, not as immersed in the program or personally
involved .
From Solicitor to Member of the Board of Directors
[Insert from tape 11, sides A and B]
Dorfman: Would you like to tell me something about your volunteer activities
with the Jewish Welfare Federation?
218
Kuhn: Well, sure. First, in fund raising as a solicitor, as a chairman
of various groups of solicitors, as the co-chairman of the campaign,
as the speaker — that's all raising funds. Then, as the co-chairman
of the campaign, I was more or less ex-officio on the board of
directors. But at that time you were a nonvoting member, and when
they announced this at the board meeting, that Marshall Kuhn and
John Steinhart are now on the board of directors but without the
right to vote, boy, we gave them the ha ha and, oh, they were very
embarrassed. They said, "Well, we're changing the bylaws so that
next year you'll be a member in your own right."
Now, my wife was also on the board of directors of the Federation
as the president of the Emanu-El Residence Club, one of the agencies,
and when her term finally ended she said, "Gentlemen, I want to
thank you very much for having allowed me to have lunch with my
husband once a month."
Then, when I was on the board, I became very active in some of
the committee work, particularly in social planning. I was chairman
of that for three years but a member of it for over ten years, and
on budgeting —
[end tape 11, side A; begin tape 11, side B]
Dorfman: What motivated you in your first volunteer work?
Kuhn: At first, I guess it was because I heard the story in 1934 (when
Rabbi Reichert at Temple Emanu-El was chairman that year) of the
Jews in Europe needing help. That's a very impressive thing when
you realize that but for the grace of God my parents might still
have been in Europe with me rather than over here. How come I'm
so fortunate? Etc.
So then I became a solicitor. I solicited a dollar, two dollars,
five dollars, maybe, in the small business area near where the Bank
of America is now — a little hat store, shoe repair, umbrella repairs.
Then I became active in the insurance section of the business and
professional division because that was the closest to what Blue
Shield was. Eventually I became a vice-chairman. Every year I'd
be a vice-chairman. It didn't mean anything.
Dorfman: What did you do when you were working within the insurance division
of the Federation?
Kuhn: They gave you the cards of men in that position and you solicited
them. You did it better if you went to see them and, eventually,
maybe you had too many cards and you started phoning them.
218a
LAUGHS FROM THE CAMPAIGN
by Marshall Kuhn
Campaigning is a serious business. But occasionally
something humorous occurs to lighten the task.
The classic fundraising story, allejgedly apocryphal,
goes as follows: Conn runs into Ginsberg in the Federation office,
and the following conversation ensues;
Conn: "Say, Ginsberg, did you hear about Schwartz?
I'm told — and my source is reliable — that he made $6,000,000 in steel
last week."
Ginsberg: "I think you got it wrong."
Conn: "What d'ya mean I got it wrong? The guy who
told me has always been right before."
Ginsberg: "Well, in the first place, it wasn't Schwartz,
. •
it was Sobel. Second, it wasn't steel, it was rubber. Next, it
•
wasn't $6,000,000, it was $13,000,000. And, lastly, he didn't make
it, he lost itl"
All the following incidents actually involved members
of our Federation:
Edward M. Warburg was chairman of the Joint Distribution
Committee for 25 years. As the son of the legendary Felix Warburg, he
more
218b
LAUGHS FROM THE CAMPAIGN
Marshall Kuhn -2-
Edward M. M. Warburg was chairman of the Joint
Distribution Committee for 25 years. As the son of the legendary
Felix Warburg, he carried his honors modestly. Following his
speech at a UJA Regional Conference in Palm Springs, someone asked
him, "Isn't it unusual for anyone to have two middle names? What
do the initials M. M. stand for?" To which Mr. Warburg replied,
"Multi-Millionaire ! "
During the Six Day War in 1967, UJA reported
receiving a gift of $250,000 from Herb Alpert. Someone in our office
who was not familiar with the jazz scene said , " Say, I wonder, does
the Tijuana Brass have anything to do with Anaconda Copper?"
A non-Jewish physician in the Central Valley was a great
admirer of the Israelis and during the Yom Kippur War, he wished to
donate an expensive foreign car to the Israel Emergency Fund. It was
arranged that Bill Lowenberg would fly to Fresno, pick up the car
and drive it back to San Francisco. There was only one problem. Bill
had never met the doctor. While waiting at the airport, he wondered
how he would recognize him. Suddenly a flashy Silver Cloud appears with
an Israeli flag flying from the radio antenna. The doctor's wife had
stayed up all the previous night making the flag.
A number of years ago, following a meeting at the home
of the Israel Consul General, -.re were approached at the refreshment
table by a Tall Distinguished Gentleman, and the conversation went like this:
more
218c
LAUGHS FROM THE CAMPAIGN
Marshall Kuhn -3-
TDG: "Good evening. I'm one of your workers."
Kuhn: "Oh ? In which division do you work?"
TDG: "Business and Professional."
Kuhn: "And in which section?"
TDG: "Apparel."
Kuhn: "Men's or women's?"
TDG: "Men's."
Kuhn: "Wholesale or retail?"
TDG: "Retail..." ;,
And then he looked us over, rapidly but carefully,
from top to bottom, and added, "I'm Kurt Gronowski of Jay Briggs— ?-
and we carry 48 Longl"
'
Following the Six Day War, there arrived at a worker's
meeting in Marin a self-appointed solicitor who hadn't been invited.
He volunteered to takejfar more than the usual number of cards, but after
a month, our records showed that he hadn't solicited one prospect.
When we checked on this worker's own record, it appeared that during
the past five campaigns, he had pledged $100 each year and hadn't
paid a penny. He still owed $500. So the question was asked,
"The S.O.B., if he's not going to pay his pledges, why can't he at
least increase them?"
-3-
218d
LAUGHS FROM THE CAMPAIGN
Marshall Kuhn -4-
When Don Seller was Campaign Chairman, he called a
meeting of 20 top Pacesetter Division leaders and told them, "The
purpose of this meeting is to have you call out the name of the
best solicitor you can think of for each of the 240 major prospects
whose names I will read off. We have two hours for this meeting,
which is 120 minutes. 120 minutes for 240 names means we have 30
seconds to consider each prospect, so there will be no time for
any extraneous comments as to whether a certain person is or is not
a good donor, etc." At that point, four men rose spontaneously and
started moving toward the door. One of them turned and said, "Look,
the only fun we have in this campaign is commenting about a donor
who should be giving 10 times his actual gift. If you're going to
take that pleasure away from us, Don, there'll be no fun at all!"
Finally,- here are three stories from theb.975 Telethon:
At one session, the Board members of a local agency were going to
man- the, phones.. c -When, dinner- was over,, one volunteer set himself
down at a phone and asked, "When do they start calling us?" It was
explained to him gently that unlike the KQED auction, they don't call
»6ira~we~call them!
At each Telethon session, every worker was instructed
lha±t if r.the;. operator indicated a change had been made in the prospect's
phone number, to note the new number on the pledge card-: '•- Further , if
more
218e
LAUGHS FROM THE CAMPAIGN
Marshall Kuhn -5-
a worker phoned a prospect early in the evening and there was no
answer, to put that card aside for calling just before the Telethon
ended at 9 p.m. One worker phoned a prospect at 7 p.m. and was given
a new number with a 412 area code. There was no answer, so she
called again at 9 p.m. When a sleepy voice answered the phone, our
volunteer began her solicitation, only to be interrupted by the
prospect. "Your records must be wrong, I moved from San Francisco
three years ago. I love the Federation, but you're calling me here
at midnight in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. So, nu, I ask you, isn't
that a bit much?"
Over the years, a worker may develop a close, relationship
with a particular prospect who refuses to make a pledge to any other
worker. One elderly female prospect was called by a male worker whom
she didn't know, and she replied, "Look, whoever I did it with last
year, I want to do it with him again this year."
*
No, if you read anything off -color into that remark,
it's not our fault.
i
III
219
Kuhn: Then one day a man named Bennett Raff in, a good friend of mine,
became the chairman of the business and professional division and
he, of course, had to have a chairman for every section. He came
to see me and he said, "Will you be the chairman next year of the
insurance section?" I said, "Sure." He was dumbfounded that any
body would say yes so rapidly because he was having a lot of trouble.
I did it and I did a superb job. I know that because from the time
I went over and got the cards, I never heard from the staff again
in the whole campaign.
1 did such a good job that the next year they asked me to be the
vice-chairman of the whole division, and after that the chairman of
the division. Then they said to me, "How about repeating as chair
man?" I said, "No soap." Then they said, "Will you be the vice-
chairman of the whole campaign?" I said, "Sure."
It's easy to say, "Do something again. You're so good." After
John Steinhart and I were co-chairmen of the whole campaign, the
next year they asked us to repeat. We figured we really should
repeat because, as co-chairmen say, you've done half. So at the
meeting at which they announced this, Ben Swig was the president of
the Federation and he said, "Now, John and Marshall did a great job
last year, but next year we want someone who's more experienced,
who's older, more mature. And who's aged more than these two guys
during the last year? So they're going to repeat." [Laughter]
As you get into it, particularly after I'd had a chance to go to
UJ co-regional conferences, and then with the trips I made overseas
in '61 to Austria, Morocco, and France; in '62 to Poland, France,
and Israel — they you really see Jewish life. You begin to wonder
what's reality and what's illusion. This is illusion here. Reality
is what's there for a Jew. That's where the tsouris is.
Your whole life becomes immersed in that — everything you do,
work, other organizations, all secondary. That's the thing that
eats you up day and night, and there are thousands of guys around
the United States who feel the same way I do. They're just imbued
with this actual saga of Jewish life in the twentieth century, with
the whole demography of the Jewish world changed, not just because
of Hitler, but all the migrations out of Arab countries to Israel
and, of course, from North Africa to France have just been stagger
ing.
heeting Great Leaders
Kuhn: Also, the fact that you run up against some marvelous people in
your own community that feel the same way you do. You see the
sacrifices they are making, and then you meet national and
220
Kuhn: international leaders. I figured out the other day that I've
shaken hands with or listened to or met every single prime
minister of Israel.
I shook hands with Ben Gurion, who came from the little shtetl
that my father came from and gave me a picture for him. I met
Moshe Sharet at Palm Springs and in Israel. Levi Eshkol. We gave
a birthday party to Rabbi Saul White. Golda was here. We heard
her at a special party at Madeleine Russell's before she spoke at
Emanu-El. I had heard her at Sherith Israel as Golda Myerson in
1948.
Snimon Paris, who had a very short duration as prime minister —
in "73, right after the Yom Kippur War, he was here and I took him
around the whole area on Thanksgiving Day before he went to Los
Angeles. It was raining. I remember I took him to Muir Woods.
He said, "Marshall, it's pouring rain. Are the rest of your woods
like this part?" I said, "Yes." He said, "All right, I've seen
it." [Chuckles] So we went to Sally Stanford's for a drink.
Yitzhak Rabin I've heard speak here. Even Begin! Rabbi Louis
I. Newman of New York had said to me in '62, "If you go to Israel
and see Henachem Begin, give him my regards." Rabbi Newman, who
had bar mitzvahed me here in San Francisco, was also a revisionist.
So my driver drove me around Jerusalem and he said, "That's Mr.
Begin." So we stopped the car and I ran over and I said, "Mr.
Begin, I bring you greetings from Rabbi Newman of New York."
"Thank you." We shook hands and that was it.
I heard Weizmann here, as I told you. So I've heard some great
American Jewish leaders — people like Eddie Warburg, who was the
chairman of the Joint Distribution Committee for twenty-five years
and a marvelous guy. When you hear these people talk about Jewish
life — Charlie Jordan, who was murdered in Czechoslovakia. When you
see the expertise these guys have in dealing with refugee problems—
this is what it's been.
Then you say, "Ah, I've tied my star to something of substance.
We're going to change the life of Jewish people around. It's a
great opportunity." The second year I was co-chairman, they said,
"Would you like to go to Poland?" I said, "I'd be co-chairman if
all you said I had to do was go to Poland. I think that's a
fantastic privilege, even though it's going to be horrible to see
Auschwitz." But it was something I had to do. So it's been no
sacrifice at all. I think I worked very hard for the Federation;
I'm talking about my volunteer career, but it was something that I
believed in every second.
221
Kuhn:
Dorfnian:
Kuhn:
Finally, you get some sophistication because you say, "Look,
you can't just be concerned with the overseas picture, even though
most of our funds are overseas. You have to have a balanced view.
You have to have a strong local community. You just can't be a
'liJAnik." And finally you get a more balanced viewpoint.
Jiut it takes a while because the overseas picture is so compel
ling. Here we were in Morocco and were being shown around by Henry
Kirsch, American Joint Distribution Committee representative. We're
going to a soup kitchen and we see three blind Jewish men who are in
old black rags. One comes in first with his cane, and each of the
others is behind with his arm on the shoulder of the man in front of
him, and they're groping their way toward the soup kitchen. They
had all been blinded by trachoma.
The big three diseases there are trachoma, tinea (which is ring
worm), and tuberculosis. We go inside and here these three men are
sitting there, these three blind men, with their hands in their
soup bowl, bread, they can't see. I figured, "My God, my God."
So then I got to Israel; you saw the reverse of the coin. It
was Israel's observance of the twentieth anniversary of the United
Jewish Appeal and they gave a show for us in Mann Auditorium, Tel
Aviv. The hit of the show was these ninety-two kids of a children's
chorus singing "Do Re Mi" in Hebrew. I sat there. I was bawling
because they were so beautiful, and when I edited all of my slides,
hundreds of slides of the two trips overseas, I took these two. I
said, "Here are the opposite sides of the coin. The three blind
men and these beautiful children, and you can make the difference."
I have tears in my eyes right now.
And so do I. That's a beautiful, beautiful story,
about your work on the social planning committee?
Can you tell me
The social planning committee at that time did not involve budgeting.
It was just a study of every agency which we funded, every local
agency, to see how it operated, particularly if it had any problems.
Were they thinking of any expansion? We didn't do all of them every
year. We did, maybe, two or three a year, and as chairman I would
appoint a committee to delve into these.
We'd do the Hebrew Free Loan to find out if they could appropriate
more from their reserves toward operating costs. Homewood Terrace
at that time was changing from a cottage system to a residential
home situation. Mount Zion Hospital was getting ready for a capital
funds drive. The Home for the Aged was getting ready for a big
building program. Every agency had something doing, and our idea
was to validate it because everything that they'd change would cost
the Federation more eventually.
222
Kuhn: The Jewish Family Service was thinking of expanding to the
Peninsula. The Jewish Center was thinking of building a center
out in Brotherhood Way and then in Marin and down the Peninsula.
That's what it was, a study of how things were changing and how
we're going to react to the changing needs and population redistri
bution in the Jewish community, which has been dramatic. Here you
find in twenty years, fifteen years maybe, 20,000 Jews have left
San Francisco to move to the Peninsula.
So from 55,000 it's dropped to 35,000. This is a staggering
change. Of the 35,000, very few of the ones who moved were elderly,
They stayed here. That was the social planning process. Now it's
combined with the budgeting process.
Initiating a Jewish Vocational Education Service
Dorfman: Were there other committees on which you served?
Kuhn: Yes, I was on the nominating committee; the committee for the study
of special relationships between our Federation and the San Jose
Federation, as to whether we should merge or not. It was a special
study committee as to whether to start a vocational service, which
we did eventually.
Dorfman: Yes, why don't you tell me about that?
Kuhn: Well, in 1965, I think it was, Bill Gillman of Chicago and Maurie
Grooman of L.A. came to San Francisco. They were here for some
other conference and they met with Dan Koshland, who was then chair
man of social planning, and myself, and Federation staff. They
talked about what a real vocational service can do, not just in
finding jobs but testing, motivating, and working with kids, retrain
ing study habits, everything.
I was really taken with this and my imagination was really fired
up. I tried to see why we couldn't have one. We had one years
before when I was in college. We had a Jewish Vocational Guidance
Bureau run by Morton Gaba, who later became the executive director
of the New Orleans Federation.
Eventually this Federation had a study which I felt reached a
completely untenable conclusion, that no special vocational services
were needed because kids have counselors in high school. Well, now,
if you know anything about counseling in the San Francisco schools,
you'd realize that this is ridiculous. It took years and years, and
finally we had a study process headed by Frank Sloss which did
validate the need for this. The Federation board approved it,
funded it, and it's been a big success.
223
Kuhn: Right now its major caseload would be the incoming refugees from
Russia and Rumania. But that's one of my babies, although I admit
that at times I got very discouraged about it. I just felt that it
should be implemented. But the professional staff of the Federation
didn't seem to — they either didn't see the need for it or they felt
that maybe they wouldn't be backed by the lay leadership.
Dorfman: You must be very proud of having achieved that.
Kuhn: I am. At one time we thought that it really should be part of the
Jewish Family Service Agency, but the professional of that agency
did not want it, so we said, "Well, then we'll have to found a
complete new agency." This involves a lot more. Maybe it's all to
the better, however, when you're dealing with only one particular
problem rather than having it as part of a complex of problems.
Dorfman: What do you see as that agency's role in the future?
Kuhn: The vocational service? Oh, it hasn't even scratched the surface.
In L.A., for example, they may have extablished twenty-five voca
tional services. First of all, we'll have to broaden the service
to Marin and the Peninsula, both north and south, I would say, maybe
half a day a week in each place. You have to really start working
with kids, developing their study habits so that they qualify to
get into college. It's not just a question of saying, "Do you want
to be a doctor? Well, maybe you've just wasted four years of your
life. You should have thought about that before."
Retraining older people. When you say that people make all these
occupational changes during their life, are they really qualified
for this? Women re-entering the labor market after they've had
their children, people coping with technological unemployment, all
sorts of things. Aptitude training. Right now we don't do any
testing. We pay to have them tested either at State College or
at Berkeley. But that's part of it. What are they really qualified
for?
A lot of it is doing things that people have assumed are being
done in the public schools, and they're not. Everybody we can get
a job for, get them off the relief rolls and make them income-
producing taxpayers, is just that much better for everybody.
"A Portrait of Federation - The Family of Federations"
Dorfman: Were there other committees with which you were involved?
224
Kuhn: Well, I'm trying to think if there was any committee I wasn't
involved in at one time or another. Just about every single
committee — I was on the executive committee because I was chair
man of social planning, which is one of the permanent standing
committees in the Federation. Then I was in charge of the annual
meeting in about 1972 when we put on a special program called
"A Portrait of Federation - The Family of Federations." I
conceived the idea of having a representative of each agency that
we supported be present, seated in the audience, just as though
they were any other luncheon guest.
Then I would, on the rostrum, describe each of these agencies
that had helped somebody, and then I would call upon that person
to move to the end of the Gold Room of the Fairmont and be part
of the group for a group photograph. Now, we had all rehearsed
this photograph before the luncheon, but no one knew that, and I
had people there who had been brought over here by the Joint
Distribution Committee and by Hillel. I had a woman who was a
doctor in Germany and was retrained in Mt. Zion, Dr. Bausch. I
had a woman who was a resident at the Home for the Aged who had
been the obstetrician for World Family in the Round.
I had Art Zimmerman, who started his hamburger business with a
loan from Hebrew Free Loan. I had Sam Ladar, the past president
of the Federation, who had been a Homewood Terrace orphan. 1 had
kids from all the centers. In fact, I've got this photograph
hanging in our hall there. We got them up there and I said, "This
is your family. These are the people you deal with. It isn't just
abstract numbers we deal with; we deal with so many thousand people,
so many millions, that it is incomprehensible. This is flesh and
blood." Of course, they got a huge hand.
And one person thanked me — Marcel Hirsch wrote me a note. He
said, "Marshall, that was a beautiful program. You must have worked
like hell." I mean, people thanked me. Walter Haas, of course — he
came up immediately afterwards. He's a man of infinite grace and
whenever I've spoken to the Federation he's always come up and
thanked me. But Marcel Hirsch was kind enough to write it.
Dorfman: It must have been a thrilling program.
Kuhn: Well, it was a luncheon, and to me it was very meaningful because
I'd worked on it for years and it took a lot of things to get
thirty-five people together. At first, I thought I was going to
get them to participate by saying something and then I realized
that would never work in a limited time. So I wrote this script
and like clockwork they would come up there and everybody was
thinking, "Who's next? Who's going to be next? Who's that?" It
was just terrific.
MARSHALL KUHN IN THE JEWISH COMMUNITY
1934 or 1935 Marshall H. Kuhn
and Rabbi Irving Reichert at
Temple Emanu-El, San Francisco
Peninsula Temple Beth El Religious
School visit to Sonora Pioneer
Jewish Cemetery, late 60 's or 1970
Bay Area Teachers' Conference, fall of 1959, Temple Sherith Israel, San
Francisco. Presentation of Chanuko menorahs to principals of Bay Area
Jewish religious schools who have served a minimum of seven years. Left
to right: Norman Shapiro, George Karonsky, Coleman Herts, Rabbi Eugene
Borowitz, Rabbi Bernard Ducoff, Marshall H. Kuhn, Roger Coffee, Chester
Zeff, Seymour Fromer.
A Portrait of Federation - The Family of Federations
Identification of names on following page
"A PORTRAIT OF FEDERATION"
Photograph taken at Annual Meeting of Jewish Welfare Federation of San Francisco,
Marin County and the Peninsula, Tuesday, December 12, 1972, Hold Room, Fairmont
Hotel, San Francisco.
LEFT TO RIGHT:
i
REAR ROW;
Shlomo Globerson, Israeli Speakers Bureau, San Francisco Chapter, American Jewish Committee;
Sp/4 Henry Lazarus, Letterman Army Institute of Research;
Robert Lent, Vice President, Central Region, AZA (BBYO) ;
Chaim Milstein, B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundation, University of California, Berkeley;
Rod Cohan, patient, Veterans Administration Hospital, San Francisco;
Miss Jessica Simmonds, B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundation, California State University, SF;
John Lewin, B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundation, City College of San Francisco;
Mrs. Michelle Chemla, Hebrew Free Loan Association;
Rabbi H. David Teitelbaum, Temole Beth Jacob, Redwood Citv, alumnus of Central Hebrew
School of the Jewish Education Society, forerunner of the Bureau of Jewish Education;
Mr. and Mrs. Ronald Goodman, Young Adults Division alumni.
MIDDLE ROW;
Douglas Roberts, Adult Program, Peninsula Jewish Community Center;
Miss Linda Lowney, student, San Francisco College of Judaic Studies;
Mrs. Sarah Shilgi, accredited Hebrew teacher, Bureau of Jewish Education;
Miss Carol Belotz, President, Central Region, B'nai B'rith Girls (BBYO);
Eric Eisenman, Temple Beth Sholom Post-Confirmation Class; graduate, Hebrew High School;
member, 1972 "Youth to Israel Study Program"; Most Valuable Player, Beth Sholom Basket
ball Team, 1972 Jewish Youth Athletic League;
Mrs. Leon Schlosser, Jewish Community Relations Council;
Mrs. Fortuna Lichaa, San Francisco Committee for Service to Emigres (JFSA) ;
Arthur Zimmerman, Hebrew Free Loan Association;
Bruce Lazar, Camp Tawonga, United Jewish Community Centers;
Miss Katya Miller, Judah L. Magnes Memorial Museum.
FRONT ROW;
Karen Goldsmith, Brandeis Day School;
Loren Katzovitz, Hebrew Academy;
Miriam Ferziger, Children's Program, South Peninsula Jewish Community Center;
Samuel A. Ladar, alumnus of Pacific Hebrew Orphanage, forerunner of Homewood Terrace;
Miss Francine Yellin, Teen Program, Brotherhood Way Jewish Community Center;
Joe Levy, Montefiore Senior Adult Program, San Francisco Jewish Community Center;
Dr. Olga Kissner, resident, Jewish Home for the Aged;
Tama Goodman, Nursery School, Marin Jewish Community Center;
Moussa Ezial, Utility Workshop (JFSA);
Mrs. Myron Goldsmith, volunteer, Mount Zion Hospital and Medical Center;
Dr. Christa Basch, resident, Mount Zion Hospital and Medical Center;
Mrs. Tillie Gintz, Community Chaplaincy.
Identification prepared by Marshall H. Kuhn, December 21, 1972.
225
Kuhn: I had a woman, Pauline Goldsmith, who was very well thought of
in the community. She was the one representing the volunteers at
Mt. Zion, having given five thousand hours of service. She was up
there. Oh, the last kid, the last person of the thirty-five, was
a little four-year-old girl who was in the nursery school at Marin
Center, and we figured this out. She comes up there and she jumps
on the lap of this woman who had been the obstetrician to the World
Family in the Round. It was just like, "That's my grandma," see?
It was just beautiful, just beautiful.
Dorfman: That was quite a program.
Kuhn: It was.
Lend of insert]
226
XII SIERRA CLUB MEMBERSHIP, 1949 TO PRESENT
Dorfman: Can you tell me, please, what drew you to the Sierra Club?
Kuhn: Well, I'll tell you very simply. I had hiked in the Sierra in 1940
in Yosemite National Park on a week-long trip sponsored by the Park
Service. I was interested in hiking and I got the idea that someday
I wanted to climb to the top of Mount Whitney. It's the highest
peak in the forty-eight contiguous states. Well, the obvious means
was through the Sierra Club. So in 1949 I found out that they were
sponsoring their usual High Trip, part of which would feature the
opportunity for a selected group to leave the main group and climb
Mount Whitney.
So I had to join the Sierra Club and at that time you had to get
two sponsors. I asked Edgar Kahn, who was an old Sierra Clubber
and a friend of mine, if he would sponsor me and he was glad to.
Then I said, "I need another one." Well, he got a friend of his
who worked for Standard Oil and who became my second sponsor.
I went on this trip and it was just sensational, just marvelous.
But I never had the opportunity to go on another Sierra Club trip
because they take two weeks, and if that's all the vacation time
you have, when are you going to have any time to spend with your
family? I suggested to the Sierra Club something which they later
adopted, which is to have a number of one-week experiences for the
fellow who cannot give up two weeks.
Their argument at first was, "Well, in one week you really don't
shake civilization out that much. On the other hand, you have a
point that it's better to have one week than none. It's simply a
matter of logistics, and that's what we're in business for, so
we'll do it." And they did it.
In fact, the whole nature of their outing program has changed
over the last twenty years. Before, they used to have one or two
big trips a year in the Sierra, and maybe with staff there might be
227
Kuhn: two hundred people. They realized they were doing to the Sierra
what they told everybody else not to do. They were denuding it
of vegetation because the pack animals that brought in all the
food and carried the dunnage were eating all the grass. We decided
we had to have far more trips of smaller size.
So now they have, maybe, in a given year, three hundred trips
all over the world, all seasons. Several years ago the average
size was eighteen people and the maximum of any one of the three
hundred groups was twenty-seven. So they've taken their own advice.
But I've never had the opportunity to go again. My kids never
seemed to want to go on a Sierra Club trip, but it wasn't only that.
When my oldest child, Alyson, was nine, I took her on part of the
same trip I had taken in 1940. It's called the High Sierra Camps,
which are operated by the Yosemite Park and Curry Company under
tne direction of the National Park Service, and it's the only
national partc that has this kind of setup.
The camps are situated a day's hiking apart. Only one is near
a road, Tuolumne Meadows, and there are six of them in all. All
year long, except for summer, they're under snow. So when the
summer comes along, they have to erect a camp with all the wood
and metal and canvas that's been stowed and create this camp for
two months of operation, July and August. In a year which has had
a heavy snowfall, they can't even operate some of the camps for the
whole month of July.
Alyson took to this like a duck to water, so when Bruce and
Nancy got older they started making the circuit, and maybe five or
six tiiues we did this trip, which is really beautiful, except that
it was confining ourselves only to Yosemite. But we never really
broadened out and went to other parks in the Sierra or with the
Sierra Club because it's — well, I'll tell you, the High Sierra
Camps have great attraction. You don't have to carry your own
food, the food is great, and you have a nice mattress and clean
sheets and hot showers, and you don't have to carry all the stuff
on your back.
Not that with the Sierra Club you have to carry all of your
ba^s, because they have animals, but the Sierra Club trips are a
little more rugged. But I should have done that. I should have,
after a few years at least, alternated and gone somewhere else
down the John Muir Trail or to some other part of the country —
Rainier or Glacier or someplace like that.
We did hiking in the Sierra, but it was pretty much always the
same thing. But I never made another Sierra Club trip. However,
I always maintained my organizational membership because I felt
228
Kuhn: that I was helping to support conservation, in which I am vitally
interested. I never paid much attention to the club other than
reading their magazine occasionally and going to the seventy-fifth
anniversary dinner and reveling in some of their battles and great
personalities.
Dorfman: When did you become a member?
Kuhn: In 1949. There were 7,000 members then and now there are 176,000.
Jewish and Other Minority Members
Dorfman: Were there other Jewish members when you joined?
Kuhn: Very few that I know of. Edgar Kahn was the only one I can really
think of offhand. When it first started in 1892, it was primarily
a Protestant organization. I'm not sure whether intentionally or
not, nowhere near as intensively as the Save-the-Redwoods League.
But religion was something that was frowned upon as a subject for
discussion, as was politics, or even what business you were in, or
how much you made or were worth, or anything like that. Those were
sort of verboten subjects. In a Navy ward room they add women to
that list of subjects. [Chuckles]
Dorfman: Was there anti-Semitism?
Kuhn: No, I didn't see any. There might have been. I don't know. There
certainly wasn't any on any organizational basis. What there was,
however, was a lack of minority participants, I include the Jews
as part of the majority. There were very few nonwhites. There are
more today but not enough.
Dorfman: Was there any racism evident?
Kuhn: Well, not evident, but it existed in this sense. In Southern
California they had a couple of incidents and these are documented
in oral histories by a few of the interviewees who were willing to
really lay it on the line. Most of them didn't want to talk about
this.
There was one case where the Angeles Chapter had been using a
special review policy of not only requiring two sponsors but insist
ing that application of a prospective member of their chapter be
acted upon first by the chapter. If the chapter executive committee
found the applicant acceptable, the application would then be sent
along to the national headquarters in San Francisco. One of the
229
Kuhn: reasons was to control "the type of applicant," however you define
that, whether it's religious or racial or whatever it was. Well,
the practice of prior review could no longer be justified and the
board of directors of the club put an end to it.
Then they had another incident where the Angeles Chapter felt
that a new applicant should sign a loyalty oath. This was during
the McCarthy era. Now, to you and me it might seem crazy that an
applicant might have to certify that he's not a communist just to
hike on a mountain. But at that time the basis of the Angeles
Chapter life was social. Every Friday night they'd have a big
dinner at a downtown restaurant or a cafeteria in Los Angeles
and that's when the chapter conducted its business. Everybody
came and saw everybody else and so on.
Well, that loyalty oath thing actually got on the national ballot
of the Sierra Club and it lost overwhelmingly nationally, but it
only lost two to one in Southern California. Gradually the club
dropped the requirement of sponsors to one, and then they eliminated
it completely, as it is now. We'd be delighted to have more
minority members.
Dorfman: Do you feel that this questionnaire was used at any time to dis
courage Jews?
Kuhn: It wasn't a questionnaire. It was a practice of reviewing the
application. I wouldn't know if it was to discourage Jews or not.
Seemingly I recall reading in one of the oral histories that that
might have happened in some instances. It might have. It's some
thing up here in Northern California that we just wouldn't under
stand, aut the whole basis of the Sierra Club membership in
Southern California was different. As a matter of fact, they felt
that Northern California was trying to dominate them. They even
talked about seceding from the Sierra Club. But it all was smoothed
over.
Sierra Club Concerns, 1949
Dorfman: What were the concerns of the club when you joined?
Kuhn: Oh, I have no idea. When I say I have no idea, that's not quite
true. I have no detailed idea. I have to look it up. It was
basically trying to save California and the West. It was getting
to the point where there were going to be real threats in the Grand
Canyon, which was one of our first — I would say that one of our
top battles was to save Grand Canyon.
230
Kuhn: lhat was done primarily by David Brower and his advertising
campaign in the New York Times where he showed the Grand Canyon and
the Sistine Chapel both flooded and, of course, it got thousands of
members to send in lots of money out of the East to fight this
cause.
We also learned the lesson that there's a very great incongruity
in all this. You have legislation passed to create a national park,
which means it will be inviolate forever, and who are the principal
supporters and defenders of the park? The United States government,
which is supported by your taxes. Then you find out that federal
officials are the first to violate this concept of conservation.
It's a horrible thing that the government doesn't support its own
policies which are set down by law. They have to be watched eter
nally.
Significant Members of the Sierra Club
Dor f man: Who were tne great personalities at that time?
Kuhn: Well, at that time there was Will Colby, who was a director for
forty-nine years, and he spanned the time from Muir. He actually
led the first High Trips back in 1901. There was Norman Clyde,
who was a fantastic climber in the Sierra. Edgar Wayburn — well,
he still is now, but he was active then in a number of conservation
issues.
Brower, of course, was the executive director and the foremost
figure in American conservation. What happened to him in the club
is, of course, a great area of interest for an oral history program
because we are in the midst of interviewing him and some of his
supporters. Everyone who was Interviewed on the anti-Brower side
who had any part in this controversy has also given his or her view.
We thought even of having a book of all these excerpts called The
Brower Affair because it was a landmark instance in conservation in
America.
But this organization became so big that its executive became
dominant, and because the board of directors were lay people and
volunteers and couldn't give the time, they really couldn't control
him. They just didn't want him to go off and bankrupt the club.
His attitude was, "Look, we're here to save the face of the
United States and, if we lose, all the money in the world ain't
going to put Humpty Dumpty back together again, so we've got to
spend it whether we've got it or not." Then, of course, his actions
231
Kuhn: led to the fact that the club became the first nonprofit organiza
tion in the United States to lose its tax exemption because of his
very hard line and unyielding attitude toward the Internal Revenue
Service. This is all fascinating.
I got involved in the history committee just shortly after he
had been fired. Of course, he's reconciled with the club. He's
now an honorary vice-president and last May he was given the John
Huir Award, which is the highest award the club can give. It's
all such a change in his relationships with the club which had
fired him eight years before. But meny of his members in the
Friends of the Earth are Sierra Club members who admire him for
what he's done. But he was just in the wrong slot in the club.
He wouldn't be controlled. He had a lot of hubris. He went
into this publishing program, these format books which sell for
$25 apiece, and he had millions of dollars of the club's money
tied up in inventory. This was great or not great, depending on
how you looked at it. Richard Leonard, who was Brower's greatest
supporter at one time, but [who was also] the man who really helped
to formulate the strategy that led to his ousting, told me, "You
know, we complained about Dave spending all this money, and here
he's been gone for years, and we're still broke." So maybe there's
a fundamental problem.
Dorfman: That, of course, was the problem you spoke of.
Kuhn: That was one of them. Also, his taking positions without any
consultation with the board or directors, placing ads in the New
York Times without clearing with anybody, or sometimes placing
them in spite of the fact that he was ordered not to. He just
was a one-man gang.
Dorfman: You said that the concerns of the club when you joined were conser
vation.
Kuhn: Well, I didn't join for any of those reasons. I joined to climb
Mount Whitney. Everything else was secondary. But every year now,
maybe 5,000 people go on these various trips throughout the world,
but tnat's out of 176,000 members. In the early days, maybe a
third of the members went. In 1901, they had 600 members and 200
of them went on the High Trip. That's a very high percentage.
So most people do not join for the same reason that I joined them.
Once I got into it, I identified with their battles. I have a book
called the Sierra Club Handbook which gives a full chronology of the
club, year by year from 1892, and I could look and see what we were
battling then, but it was building up toward the great issue of
Grand Canyon.
232
Dorfman: What were the political issues when you joined?
Kuhn: Do you mean political within the club?
Dorfman: Yes.
Kuhn: Well, there weren't any at that time. Brower had become the first
paid executive. Everyone was happy with him. He had come from the
University of California Press. He was very good at writing and
everything seemed to be going quite smoothly. I was unaware of any
political issues within the club. Of course, there were always
personal things — jockeying around for position on the board of
directors and so on. But it was very difficult because of this
policy that once you were on the board it was almost impossible to
get you off.
Dorfman: We'll have to stop here.
[end tape 10, side A]
The History Committee
[Insert from tape 11, side B; and from tape 12, side A]
Founding Chairman
Dorfman:
Kuhn:
You are chairman of the history committee of the Sierra Club,
you been chairman since the initiation of that committee?
Have
Yes. I'm the founding chairman. It's quite a story. In 1969 my
children and I were hiking in Yosemite in the high country. We
visited the High Sierra Camps near Glen Aulin on the Tuolumne
River and I got talking with a man. He said, "That's my father
[Tom Rieger] over there and this is my kid. That's three genera
tions. My father has been hiking up here every year since 1905
in the Army Patrol of Yosemite. There wasn't even a National Park
Service in 1916." [The park was controlled by the U.S. Cavalry.]
Tom had seen tremendous changes in the park in the intervening
sixty-four years.
So I got back and I wrote to the Sierra Club and asked, "Did
anybody ever take down reminiscences of men like this elderly
gentleman, Tom Rieger?" "Well, yes and no. We should, but we
don't, and Bancroft Library does it." But my letter somehow got
233
Kuhn: photocopied and one copy went to the executive director of the
club, who answered me in that vein. The other one went to the
president of the club, who said, "We've set aside $1,000 from the
Sierra Club Foundation to get started on this thing."
Now, the Sierra Club, you have to realize, is an organization
that is really a volunteer organization, and they say, "Here it is,
go run with it." There are no written rules. Well, I had never
read the bylaws of the Sierra Club, and they wouldn't tell you much
about what I was trying to do anyway. So there I was, and so I
asked the people from Bancroft to come over and meet with the Sierra
Club and tell us what's involved in an oral history program. Then
I said, "I've got to really get some support. I'm unknown. I've
belonged to the club since '49, but that's not good enough."
So on my own I called a meeting of several past presidents. The
leading one was Francis Farquhar, who was then honorary president
of the club. He and his wife attended. We had it at The Bancroft
Library at Berkeley. Lewis Clark, another past president, came.
Charlotte Mauk, who was an honorary vice-president, came — I had
hiked with her in my only trip with the Sierra Club in '49 — and a
number of others. We passed this resolution that, "Here a committee
of club members feels that the club should have a history committee."
I got Will Siri, who was a past president of the club and a member
of the board, to introduce this at the annual meeting, which was in
May of that year, and the board approved it.
Then I took these same people who had been in the ad hoc committee
and we expanded it and had a history committee. The first resolution
we came up with was to put all our papers in Bancroft. Now, can we
stop for a moment?
[end tape 11, side B; begin tape 12, side A]
Dorfman: You were telling me about your involvement as chairman of the
history committee and your participation in the oral history
project.
Kuhn: I had asked the question — which was rather embarrassing, I found
out later — as to where all the records were in the historical
archives of the Sierra Club. Well, they were here, there, and
everywhere. Many of them were in commercial storage, and they
were in nooks and crannies everywhere. So I got our history com
mittee to recommend that they all be placed at Bancroft, because
at that time, the moment the history committee was organized, we
were approached by other institutions — the Denver Public Library,
Cornell. Anyone who was interested in conservation would find
that the Sierra Club papers would be a very, very handsome addition.
But it made no sense to anyone who had ever been in Bancroft,
because of the historical association of the Sierra Club and the
University and because Bancroft wanted them. So we voted to go to
Bancroft.
234
Kuhn: Then this was going to go to the board of directors at its
meeting in September, 1970 at Clair Tappaan Lodge at Norden. This
was going to be on a Saturday or a Sunday. Friday I got a call
from the Sierra Club. They had a volunteer go through all the
past minutes of the board of directors for twenty years, because
the board of directors would meet on the weekends and maybe covered
a hundred subjects. The minutes were maybe twenty single-spaced
typewritten pages and they were trying to find out what happened
to all this business.
They found out that in 1958 the board of directors had passed
two motions: one, to lend The Bancroft Library 302 letters from
John Muir to his younger daughter, Helen; and, two, to lend all
historical papers belonging to the club to The Bancroft Library.
Well, now, this made clear to me why various people had said to
me, "Gee whiz, the history committee. That came up once," but no
one could remember when. So when I went to the meeting and Will
Siri again introduced this on our behalf, I said, "Gentlemen, the
302 letters have been loaned to Bancroft, but no one ever followed
through with this other resolution, so I'm really not asking for
anything new. I'm asking you to confirm what you've already passed
twelve years ago. Except in both cases I want you to give the
material rather than lend it, for the simple reason that the
original papers of John Muir were loaned to Bancroft by his family,
his grandchildren, eight of them. Bancroft maintained them for
twenty, thirty, or forty years and all of a sudden the family
decided somehow they wanted them to go to the University of the
Pacific at Stockton. They took them out of Bancroft and loaned
them to the University of the Pacific where they are now on loan,
not a gift. That's not fair to the institution."
They agreed and we changed the status of the 302 letters from a
loan to a gift and we gave them all this other material. Richard
Leonard, who was a director of the club and is now its honorary
president, said, "Mr. Kuhn, what you said is completely correct.
I have a lot of historical records. I wouldn't give anything to
the Sierra Club, because they have no competence in retaining it,
but if you'll give it to Bancroft, you come to my office on Monday
and I'll give you priceless things," and he did.
He was an attorney for mining interests and he gave me fantastic
documentation — he's one of the world's great conservationists —
including all the ore samples from the Minarets area, east of
Yosemite, which is a private mining claim which could still be
exploited.
Then I went around and I started collecting stuff elsewhere.
The club had 123 cases of papers, unsorted, in commercial storage.
That went over there. When the club moved its headquarters two
235
Kuhn: years ago, every nook and cranny was looked at in the club's office,
which it had occupied in the Mills Building for seventy years. That
went to Bancroft. Ansel Adams had catalogued 4,000 glass plates
taken by Joseph LeConte ("Little Joe") and they had been in the
vault at the Bank of California for thirty years. That went over
to Bancroft.
I called Dr. Stewart Kimball, who had been chairman of the out
ings committee, and I said, "Doctor, where are the outings committee
records?" He said, "Well, I've got them all from 1901. They're all
in my basement." I said, "Supposing the next chairman is not so
conscientious?" He said, "I've got the idea." That afternoon — you
may not believe it — that afternoon he took them to Bancroft. The
same day.
Joel Hildebrand gave all of his records. Everyone we interviewed
gave all of their records. Ansel Adams sent up two cartons. That
went over. He said, "It's been over thirty-eight years. I should
have more than two cartons, but I don't like to save paper."
The reason I say that I'm a better chairman by not being an
historian — if I had taken a history course at Cal and was a true
historian, I'd be sitting in my basement reading Ansel Adams's
papers instead of giving them to Berkeley for someone else to read
and then going out and getting some more, because it was a battle
against time because no one at that point knew that we were
interested in getting this material.
We had a man named Joe Momyer who was a leader in the fight to
save San Gorgonio from being a big ski resort with one of these
tramways. All of his papers were taken. His wife said, "I don't
know when I can get them out and organize them." I said, "Don't
organize them; bring them up," and she did. And Bancroft will
organize them because they have a system which is part of the
archivist's skill, which is different from a librarian's.
I have just written to the executive in charge of our Washington,
D.C. office, which has these huge files of all the national conser
vation issues. He doesn't know what to do with them. He said, "I
don't have the staff to organize them." I said, "Don't organize
them. You just ship them off to Bancroft, we'll pay for it, and
they'll organize it."
So over the years we've acquired all this material. A woman
came into the club about three or four years ago and she had a
painting. This is a portrait of John Muir done by his brother
in the early 1860s and it had been in her family in Pacific Grove
ever since. A part of Muir's family settled in Pacific Grove,
where there was a big religious colony. Even Stevenson mentioned
236
Kuhn: that in his book on the Monterey Peninsula. This had been there
for over eighty years. She said, "Do you want this?" So that's
at Bancroft.
A woman wrote me from Texas that her grandfather was a member
of the Donner Party: "Would you like his materials?" Even though
it had nothing to do with the Sierra Club, we took them and put
them in Bancroft because that's the leading collection of things
on the Donner Party. Fascinating stuff comes up all the time.
So then we had alerted the club leadership to the fact that
their papers would eventually go to Bancroft. I met with every
past president, board members, general members who would give me
their albums of photographs taken on High Trips, and there were a
lot of interesting and humorous sidelights. You would get someone
to bring in a photograph of a High Trip in 1903 and say, "My grand
father's in there somewhere. Can you tell me who everybody in this
photograph is?" "I can't tell you who anybody is."
So we were established then. Then the next thing we did — we had
a young woman named Dr. Susan Schrepfer. She had gotten her Ph.D.
in history at UC Riverside and her thesis was on the history of the
redwoods preservation movement. She is now teaching at Rutgers.
But for the first three or four years of our committee, she was our
oral history consultant. She had done a lot of oral history work
for the Forest History Society and the Save-the-Redwoods League
and she was working with Villa Baum.
She devised a questionnaire which we went over and we sent it
to 275 people who had joined the club in 1930 or before, because
we figured, "Time is against us. If we have to interview someone,
we'd better hit the old-timers first." So we sent this question
naire out and we got a certain response. We sent it out again to
those who hadn't responded, and a third time. By the third time,
we had gotten 55 percent of all 275 who had filled out this very
exhaustive six-page questionnaire, a lot of them adding other
materials.
From that we could trace their career and find out, is this
person a good candidate to be interviewed and what material does
he or she have that they could either give or lend our collection
of papers? Some of them were just absolutely tremendous. They
also had questions, such as, "What is your reaction to the changes
made in the Sierra Club since you joined in those early days?" and
invariably they were against the changes. What they were saying is,
"I'd really like to be young again."
One man particularly — instead of just not answering, he answered
his questionnaire and sent it back saying, "I'm not going to answer
this thing because I've belonged to the Sierra Club for fifty years,
and no one's ever asked me my opinion about anything yet, and it's
too late now." So I then read that and I didn't say who it was from
237
Kuhn: and Francis Farquhar said, "I bet that's from Joe So-and-So from
Palo Alto. He always was a crank." I said, "That's right."
[Chuckles] So everyone is known, you see, by his reputation.
But we got some great material from that.
We purposely eliminated any questions dealing with religion,
economic status, or political parties. We thought that might
hamper people from answering. We talked about having an anonymous
questionnaire to go out to the same people who responded, asking
about material. We haven't done it yet and maybe we never will get
around to it.
Then the question came up, when are we really going to get
together on this oral history? That's what it's all about. It
wasn't so easy because none of us had ever done it before. We
couldn't have it all done by Bancroft professionally because we
didn't have that kind of money. So we figured, "Well, the committee
will have to do some itself. We'll have to save the big ones for
Bancroft."
Well, we got assurance of money from the Sierra Club Foundation
to do Richard Leonard's on an entirely professional basis and that
was the first one that was ever completed that way — two volumes, a
magnificent thing, because he is, as I say, one of the world's
great conservationists. All the others in the early years were
done by committee members. In the last few years we've had them
completed also by history students at Cal State Fullerton who
enrolled in an oral history program and get academic credit for
this. They've done primarily Southern California interviewees.
We've finished twenty-five so far, one by Bancroft, as I say —
the Leonard interview — and the rest by committee members or the
Fullerton students. The big question is how to get started. So
we got started by having Eleanor Bade interview her mother-in-law, who
was the widow of William F. Bade', who was Muir's literary executor.
When I went over to see the elder Mrs. Bade" and I explained to
her what this was all about, her husband's desk at the Pacific
School of Religion, where he had been president at the time of his
death, had been locked since 1926. She went over that afternoon
and took all its contents and took them over to Bancroft because
she knew that we would preserve them. Bancroft became the historical
arm of the Sierra Club and we don't pay a thing for it. How are you
going to get that service?
When we give it to them, we give it to them, because if we want
something, if we want to get a copy--of something, we have to pay
for it the same as anybody else. One time we had a demonstration
in economic value over this. There had been a Los Angeles attorney
238
Kuhn: named Johnson who had given about $2.5 million to Nature Conservancy.
Although he had no direct heirs, someone protested that he was going
to bring a lawsuit contending that the Sierra Club and the Nature
Conservancy had exercised undue pressure on him.
Well, someone in the club remembered he had written a letter and
they called Bancroft. Within twenty- four hours they had a copy of
this letter which he had written thanking the Sierra Club for the
advice he had asked them for about what he should do with this huge
legacy, and the lawsuit was dropped. So that shows the value.
Now, the club itself — had the records been in Bekins Storage,
they never could have found it. So it had an economic advantage,
besides the fact that Marie Byrne, over at Bancroft, probably knows
as much about the Sierra Club as anybody because she handles hundreds
of thousands of pieces of material, and it's being organized grad
ually. As I said, these 123 cases were completely unorganized. The
files were unlabeled. Everything was mixed up. No one knew what it
was.
They have a system of a three-way sorting process. Eventually,
when it's all done, she'll produce a catalogue, The Holdings of the
Sierra Club Papers, which will be distributed widely entirely within
the club and then to every institution interested about the country
and conservation. So you'll be able to see what the Sierra Club has
at Berkeley. Of course, we're always adding to it. This material
that will come from our Washington, D.C. office — I don't know how
large it will be — hundreds and hundreds of files which we'll have to
do. Eventually this will be cross-indexed with Sierra Club chapter
holdings .
For example, the Los Angeles Chapter (the Angeles Chapter, it's
called) has their own historical materials. We don't really want
them to go to Bancroft because they have nothing to do with the
national issues that the club faced. They're going to UCLA. The
Pacific-Northwest Chapter will go to the University of Washington,
and so on, and eventually all of the major chapters will have their
own archives, and this will be cross-indexed with what we have at
Berkeley. It just takes time, particularly when Bancroft is under
a financial squeeze.
In having to decide several years ago between buying up new books
or cutting their hours, they opted to cut their hours because they
have to buy the books. But their hours are shortened and they're
open from nine to five on weekdays and one to five on Saturdays , so
they've been a tremendous help to us.
At our history committee meeting here next week, Bob Becker, the
associate director of the library, will be present and give a report
on just where we are on all the organizing of this material. If
239
Kuhn: someone, for example, wants to do an interview, the first place they
would go would be to research the career of the potential interviewee,
at Bancroft. That's where you're going to find out about this guy's
life and the interviewer has to know more about the guy's life than
he knows himself.
You may recall that it's my goal to someday have a fund set up so
that we have a Sierra Club fellowship in conservation history at the
University of California at Berkeley. The outstanding student in
conservation and history will have a stipend and a nice award to
continue his study on conservation history within Bancroft. That
would be a beautiful thing.
So, then, we've done a lot of other things besides the oral
histories. We've involved more and more members who were willing
to take a chance. A lot of them didn't want to fail. They didn't
know how to use a tape recorder, so Willa [Baum] came and we dis
tributed her manual. We had training sessions at the history
committee meetings and gradually they got into it — not many, it's
true, but we had some involvement; we've produced twenty-five
interviews .
The average member of the history committee, however, just comes
to meetings and sits back. A lot of them are elderly and this is
not a skill they're going to pick up. In fact, a lot of them don't
even like to talk into a tape recorder and we had to trick some of
them when we interviewed them. We have some going on now that are
really historic. We've almost completed the oral histories of Ansel
Adams and of David Brower. Of course, with Brower being the central
figure in this huge cataclysmic change in the club in the late '60s,
this will be a magnificent document to have.
The interviewer there also is Susan Schrepfer, who did Leonard.
Even though she started Brower here, when she moved to Rutgers —
Brower comes to New York frequently and she'll go up there to New
York and interview him there. Then she also started last year Edgar
Wayburn.
Her place was taken by Ann Lage, who is a member of our committee,
but who also has an M.A. in history. She and her husband do inter
views together. They did Mr. Farquhar together and they did Mrs.
Farquhar. Now they're doing Will Siri, who not only is a past
president of the club but also a guiding light of the Save-the-Bay
Association and was a member of the club's expedition to Mt. Everest.
So when I delivered Leonard's interview to the trustees of the
Sierra Club Foundation a year ago, I pointed out that one of the
reasons we've been able to get such great financial support from the
Foundation is the fact that we're counting on egos. Every president
2AO
Kuhn: of the Foundation wants to eventually be interviewed himself. So
he figures, "We better give the money to everybody else and then
they can't hold it back from us." [Chuckles]
Dorfman: To perpetuate it long enough.
Kuhn: That's right. And as I looked around that board meeting of the
trustees, seven of the men there we had either interviewed, were
interviewing, or were about to interview. Then I realized that we
interviewed Farquhar, Bradley, and Bernays, all just before they
died, and that would have been all gone if we hadn't done that. So
we are battling against time.
Dorfman: How many interviews do you have in all?
Kuhn: Twenty-five, and we'll finish about maybe ten more. We present them
every year at the annual club meeting in May and introduce the inter
viewee, the interviewer, and the person who wrote the introduction —
the foreword — who is generally a very close friend of the interviewee,
and they all get a big hand. The club loves it because some of these
people are elder statesmen of the club. Last year we had a woman
from Los Angeles, Mrs. Johnson. Well, she came up all the way from
L.A. because we were presenting her interview, and she brought her
son from Palo Alto and his wife, and she got a tremendous ovation.
Mrs. Farquhar — we presented her interview. She is one of the
great women climbers of all time, besides being the widow of Francis
Farquhar. She got a great ovation. This is nostalgia for the club
coming back.
But it isn't only nostalgia, because I point out that when we
document the club's progress, then we won't make the same mistake
over and over again. We just, as a matter of fact, sent out two
mailings, one to the internal people within the club, and one to
the outside world — the institutions, libraries, etc., or the con
servation organizations. All three men (the interviewee, the inter
viewer, and the person who wrote the introduction), the interviews,
the costs — and we've gotten a pretty good response, because I keep
telling myself, "It doesn't do any good to have these on the shelves."
Our normal distribution is to the person who did the interview,
the person who was interviewed, to Bancroft, to the Sierra Club's
Colby Library, and UCLA. But we want the chapters to buy copies.
We want people to read them. It doesn't do any good if they're
sitting up on a shelf. They will be read and people will be using
them for research. So it has been a great contribution in the sense
that if we hadn't done it, there is so much more we would have lost.
241
Kuhn: After all, the club had seventy-eight years of history without
ever doing anything about its own history, primarily because it was
too busy trying to save the country and just didn't think about it.
I told the board when I took the chairmanship, "We'll never divert
any of your energies or funds from your principal job. We'll always
be something valuable but peripheral." And I've gotten tremendous
support. As a matter of fact, the history committee's budget for
next year is the only budget in the club that wasn't cut, because it
was explained that we've had ongoing commitments with Bancroft for
some of these interviews and we just have to complete them. So it's
been a great expression of confidence in what we're trying to do.
[end tape 12, side A; end of insert]
The History of the Committee
[The following inserted material was dictated and recorded by Marshall
Kuhn on February 17, 1978 during a work session at his home at 30 7th
Avenue, San Francisco, with Ann Lage, vice-chairman of the Sierra Club
history committee.]
i,
Kuhn: In 1949, I joined the Sierra Club in order to climb Mt. Whitney on
that year's High Trip. Unfortunately, as I said, this was my first
and only Sierra Club outing.
In 1967, I suggested to the San Francisco Recreation and Parks
Department that the nature trail then under consideration for the
most westerly twenty acres of the Strybing Arboretum be named in
honor of John Muir, this being the seventy-fifth anniversary of the
founding of the Sierra Club in San Francisco, with Muir as founding
president from 1892 until his death in 1914.
The suggestion was received enthusiastically. I assisted in
raising private funds for the project and ground was broken in 1970
at a ceremony in which the president of the Sierra Club, Phil Berry,
took part along with several of Muir's grandchildren. The John Muir
Nature Trail was the only addition to Golden Gate Park during 1970,
the park's centennial year.
Upon returning home from the 1969 Yosemite hiking trip during
which I met the three generations of the Rieger family, as I men
tioned before, I wrote to the Sierra Club to tell them about Tom
Rieger and to ask if the club had any program by which the reminis
cences of persons like Tom could be recorded. I received two
immediate and seemingly independent replies. Mike McCloskey
suggested that I consult with ROHO of Bancroft Library at UC
Berkeley. President Berry informed me that $1,000 was being
242
Kuhn: appropriated for this purpose and asked that we begin. I later
found that Phil had sat next to Willa Baum, the head of ROHO, on
the bus taking them to the dedication of the Redwood National Park,
so doubtless he got the "ROHO treatment."
In all my years of working with organizations, none had ever
provided $1,000 for a project without being specifically asked to
do so. I was somewhat aware of ROHO, as it had conducted several
oral interviews in the California Jewish Community interview series
on behalf of the Judah Magnes Memorial lluseum of Berkeley.
My roots in Bancroft go back to 1935, when I was commuting from
San Francisco to Berkeley, and each week I would lug on the train
and ferryboat a large bundle of out-of-town newspapers which Bancroft
was sending to Allen's Press Clipping Bureau. For this I was paid
fifty cents.
I spoke with Willa Baum and arranged an appointment with Mike
McCloskey at which we could discuss just what this oral interview
project would entail. Willa brought with her Susan Schrepfer, a
doctoral candidate in history at UC Riverside, who had recorded
oral histories for both the Forest Historical Society and the Save-
the-Redwoods League.
V
In the course of the meeting, I asked what seemed to be an
innocent but relevant question. To wit, "Where are the club's
records located?"
Mike McCloskey answered, "Well, there are some of them in this
office and there are over 120 cases of records in commercial storage.
We don't really know what's in them. And there are other records
in our safe deposit box and others in the safe deposit vault. And
I guess that some committee chairmen have records in their basements;
no one really knows." In any case, we decided to go forward with
this.
Never having even worked on a Sierra Club committee before, I was
a little mystified as to how to proceed. There didn't seem to be any
guidelines for chairmen, so in time I realized that you had to
formulate your own, and unless you violated some principle of the
club or got them further into debt, you were okay. Shortly there
after, we approached a number of people with interest in the club's
history and asked them to serve on an ad hoc committee to consider
whether or not the club should have a history committee. These
people included Francis and Marjory Farquhar, Lewis Clark, Charlotte
Mauk, and Harriet Parsons.
243
Kuhn: We had our first and only meeting in 1970, at The Bancroft
Library. The ad hoc committee voted to recommend to the board
of directors of the Sierra Club that a history committee be
formed and established with one of the chief purposes being to
record the reminiscences of the club leaders.
This was at a time when there 'd been some violence on the UC
campus and Francis Farquhar moved that the minutes reflect that
during the course of our meeting no bricks were thrown through
the windows of the library. As a matter of fact, the windows no
longer were [made of] glass, but of lexan, a GE plastic which is
about fifty to a hundred times more resistant to bricks than is
glass.
At the annual meeting, the first Saturday in May of 1970, Will
Siri, then a director of the club, carried this motion and it was
passed by the board of directors, without opposition. Shortly
thereafter, President Berry wrote to me and asked if I would
consent to serve as the chairman of the committee, which I was
pleased to do.
We formed a committee consisting primarily of people who had
served in an ad hoc capacity, plus others, including several
academicians — Dr. Robert Nash of UC Santa Barbara, Dr. Robin
Brooks of San Jose State University, and Holvig Jones, who is
the social sciences librarian of the University of Oregon and
author of John Muir and the Sierra Club.
Other members of the committee were club members who were
interested in this history and it seemed that every one of them
had taken courses in college in history and I was the only one
who had never taken a course at Cal in history. For a time, that
really gave me an inferiority complex until I realized that the
lack of this history background was a great asset.
At our first meeting, the newly formed history committee voted
to propose to the board of directors of the club that the records
of the club be placed in The Bancroft Library. Already we had
received requests from other institutions, including the Denver
Public Library and Cornell University, who were realizing that
Sierra Club papers had not been given to institutions, that they
might be "up for grabs." But to us it seemed logical that with
the relationship between Cal and the Sierra Club, the proximity
of The Bancroft Library to the club headquarters, and Bancroft's
desire to house this material, that Cal should be the logical
choice.
244
Kuhn: The quarterly meeting of the club was scheduled for the first
weekend in September at Clair Tappaan Lodge. A few days before the
meeting, I was called by a volunteer from the club who was going
through the minutes of the board of directors for the past twenty
years and classifying each action taken by the board. Each quarterly
meeting considers up to a hundred different subjects.
She asked me, as I mentioned before, if I knew that in 1958 the
board of directors of the club had passed two motions: first, to
lend to The Bancroft Library 302 letters written by John Muir to
his younger daughter; and, second, to lend to The Bancroft Library
all other historical papers of the Sierra Club. I hadn't known that.
But this explained why numerous persons around the club, including
some board members, had said to me, "Gee, I thought we did something
about that years ago."
I checked and, yes, Bancroft had received the 302 letters on loan,
but nothing else from the club had ever come. The following year,
when 1 had a cnance to meet with Dave Brower, he explained that his
failure to implement the 1958 resolution, with respect to all other
records of the club going to Bancroft on loan, was merely an over
sight.
So now we were faced with the fact that what we were asking the
board to do was merely to reconfirm what they'd already done in 1958.
however, we had before us the example of the Muir papers, wherein
the Muir family had loaned to Bancroft all the papers on John Muir
that they had, including those used by linnie Marsh Wolf in her book,
Son of the Wilderness. And then years later — in fact, just about
1970 — the heirs of John Muir withdrew their letters from Bancroft
and loaned them to the University of the Pacific at Stockton.
As I have said, I felt that it was manifestly unfair to Bancroft
that had spent so much time and effort and money over the years in
maintaining the papers, only to have them taken away. So when the
motion was made at the Clair Tappaan Lodge, it was in two parts: one,
to give to The Bancroft Library all the Sierra Club papers; and, two,
to change the previous gift of 302 letters to his daughter from loan
to a gift. The board approved these motions, which allowed the papers
to be used by any qualified scholar and by such other persons as the
board of directors of the Sierra Club may direct.
Well, this was a great triumph, to get this type of endorsement,
and 1 promised the board of directors that the activity of the history
committee would never be of such a nature as to distract the attention
of the world from matters more pressing in the area of conservation.
In the evening of that day, I spoke about the history project to
members of the Sierra Club council. Subsequently there began a
determined effort on my part to get as much material as we could over
to Bancroft.
245
Kuhn: It started with the papers of the past president Harold Bradley,
when at the May meeting he and his wife headed for me. He said that
he had five cartons of Sierra Club papers which he had intended to
give to the Berkeley City Dump to reduce the fire hazard, because
Berkeley had said that if you would eliminate any potential fire
hazard from your home, they wouldn't charge you for removing the
garbage, as it were. You may remember not only the Berkeley fire
in 1923, but there was a big canyon fire above them a few years ago
in BerKeley.
So I asked Harold to please filter this [material] through our
committee first. I recall going to his home and taking his five
cartons right to Bancroft long before we even had authorized Bancroft
to be our depository.
Earlier I mentioned that more material came along, including the
very famous file on the Minarets. 1 recall Dr. Kimball, who was then
chairman of the outings committee, and he said that he had in his
basement the records of all outings dating back to 1901. And I
asked, "What happens when you're no longer chairman of the committee?"
He said, "Then I'll give them to my successor."
"Yes, but suppose he doesn't have a basement or is not as consci
entious?" He got the point immediately and, believe it or not, that
afternoon, the same day, he delivered all these materials, and I gave
every one to Bancroft.
You know the story of how the same occurred with Mrs. William
Bade", the widow of the literary executive. She had not been to her
husband's office in the Pacific School of Religion since his death
in 1926, I believe. When she heard my story, she went over that
afternoon with her key, which she'd kept for forty-four years. She
emptied his desk drawers and took everything over there to Bancroft.
So we had a great deal of cooperation on this, particularly because
we asked people to give us the material and if they wanted it back
we'd make photocopies. Also we got material from people who were
being interviewed.
And now, literally, we have tons and tons of material at Bancroft,
all being absorbed slowly, because it was a mammoth job when you
consider that there were 123 cases of unclassified material in
commercial storage, including, you might say, some books "borrowed"
from the Sierra Club Library, which is noncirculating.
Regrettably, we have about 10,000 photographs in the archives at
Bancroft, the overwhelming majority of which are not identified in
any way, as to who took the picture, or when and where it was taken,
or of what. It is a tragedy that someone who spent so much effort
lugging all his photographic equipment to the mountains couldn't
have taken a few more minutes to just write in pencil on the back of
the photograph what it was.
246
Kuhn: It took our committee longer, however, to figure out just exactly
how we were going to handle it, the oral history program. It became
apparent that we would not be able to finance this entirely on a
professional basis with ROHO doing all the interviewing. But ROHO,
through Willa Baum, was delighted to more or less guide our program,
and I might say that Willa Baum has been a tower of strength through
out. Her national reputation has rubbed off on our program.
We decided, if we could, to do a number of interviews by volunteer
members of the committee. Finally, this caught on. I am enclosing
a page from the 1977 completed interviews that shows a list of the
twenty-five interviews completed to date. Of course, in 1978 we
hope to add more.
We've had interviews done by our committee members; and by Bancroft,
such as the interview completed by Susan Schrepfer, who was also
working on Brower and Wayburn. We have the interviews on Southern
California personalities by students at Cal State Fullerton. And
now this year we have interviews being done with several prominent
members of our Atlantic Chapter, with interviews being done by
Columbia University, the director of which is Louis M. Starr,
spiritual successor of the historian Allan Nevins who started the
whole oral history program back in Columbia [University] in the
late '40s.
Susan Schrepfer 's article in Forest History gives a record of the
history committee's activities to that point.* Including those
activities and those engaged in subsequently, it might look like
this:
(1) The transfer of historical materials to Bancroft.
(2) The oral history program.
(3) The development of the program, "One Hundred Years of Yosemite
Photography."
(4) Work done by the committee in furthering the program presented
each summer at the Le Conte Memorial Lodge in Yosemite Valley.
(5) Work done by the history committee in furthering relationships
for the John Muir National Historic Site in Martinez, culminating in
their developing a room just south of Muir's "scribble den" into a
"Sierra Club Room" within his home.
(6) Participation by the chairman in the filming of a training
film for National Park Service personnel regarding the bicentennial,
entitled Interpreting the Bicentennial.
* Susan R. Schrepfer, "Sierra Club History Program," Journal of
Forest History, pp. 34-35.
247
Kuhn: (7) Ten years ago or more, Tredman Lachalt, San Anselmo, traveled
wherever Muir had lived or visited and made a slide presentation that
was called, "John Muir, His Life and Legacy." Lachalt presented this
with a suggested narration to the club. The history committee was
the first to use it. Copies have since been made on nationwide
distribution. We have shown it at numerous meetings in this area.
One showing was to the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and
before I presented the slides I was thrilled to know that the real
hot issue before the group that year was the news coming from
Washington that their efforts to grant amnesty to Robert E. Lee
would probably be successful!
(8) The committee has also participated in the club's publishing
program: first, by articles in the Sierra Club Bulletin; and, second,
by working with the publications committee to urge that the series,
which started with John Muir and the Sierra Club, be continued.
(9) Incidentally, at Martinez our relationship with the community
was not of the most sanguine nature, as they had previously felt they
had been insulted by the Sierra Club. So our efforts to heal this
breach have been successful, as evidenced by the fact that the club
was one of the sponsors of a community presentation of a play about
John Muir held in the bicentennial year in one of the public parks
in Martinez. It was a delightful show, written by Anne Ley, who
was also interested in doing a one-man show on the road, such as
James Whitmore did with Give 'em Hell, Harry.
(10) One of the most distinguished members of the history committee
is William F. Kimes of Mariposa. I must also include his wife,
Maymie. He is possibly the world's outstanding authority on John
Muir. His assistance has been invaluable. He has a tremendous
library in his home with everything written by or about Muir. He
has recently had published a beautiful volume, now in the Colby
Library, entitled John Muir: A Reading Bibliography.
(11) We have also cooperated with outside authors who have
developed works on John Muir — one particularly, John Muir's America,
text by Tom Watkins, photographs by DeWitt Jones.
(12) By having a history committee, members of the club know that
we are interested in maintaining our records and we have attracted
some remarkable gifts, including an original painting of Muir done
by one of his brothers about 1865. This had been sitting in a
relative's home in Pacific Grove t California for over eight decades.
It was given to the club when it was realized that we were interested
in this type of material. So this has been a fascinating part of it.
(13) The most fascinating part, however, is that the committee has
had access to meeting and recording the reminiscences of some wonder
ful people who have really made great contributions to the Sierra Club
248
Kuhn: and to conservation. We are delighted, of course, that of the
interviews done "professionally," Richard Leonard's were the first.
And it was a great example to have of this kind of interview.
(14) The economic value of this program was underscored the very
first year it was in operation. I think this story is worth repeat
ing. A Los Angeles attorney had left close to $3 million to the
Nature Conservancy, and it was contended by some people opposing
this bequest that the Sierra Club and the Nature Conservancy had
conspired to influence this donor in some type of illegal combina
tion. A search of the Bancroft records, as a result of a simple
phone call from the club headquarters to Bancroft, resulted in
Bancroft's providing within one day a copy of the original letter
in which this attorney — whose name, I believe, was Rodney Johnson —
had written to the Sierra Club, asking the club to suggest uses for
this money. As a result, the lawsuit was dropped. This was a value
of the program we never had even anticipated.
(15) I repeat that I look forward to the time when, if we could
get the funding, we could set up at Berkeley a Sierra Club fellow
ship in conservation history, perhaps not to be awarded every year,
but when a qualified candidate in history comes along. This could
be a distinguished contribution to American scholarship and conserva
tion history.
As for funding, generally, we have been very fortunate in that
the Sierra Club Foundation has been so generous to our program. Of
course, as I mentioned, at the quarterly meeting of the Sierra Club
Foundation, at which our oral interview is presented, the reason we
get funding so easily is perhaps because every member of the board
wants to be included in the interview program.
Actually, as I looked around the room, there were seven men among
the trustees who have been interviewed or are being interviewed or
whom we've made definite arrangements to interview shortly. So we'll
get around to everybody eventually, starting with the oldest ones
first.
I've always viewed the history committee as a joint effort, even
though at times we wished we'd had more participation. Therefore,
it was with considerable forethought when we wrote the introduction
to the oral history volumes that so many people are credited for the
successful program. I think our team approach should be stressed.
My own role has been that of a quarterback or catalyst.
Our committee has worked closely with the national committee on
awards. As a result, an honorary life membership was granted by the
board of directors of the club to Ryozo Azuma, who as a young man
met John Muir. That meeting changed Azuma1 s life. The story will
be written up in the April, 1978 issue of Sierra.
Sierra Club Bulletin, Aug/Sept 1975
248a
MARSHALL KUHN
The
Sierra
Club . . .
Remembering
the Early Years
ON JUNE 4, 1892, twenty-seven
men gathered in the office of
Attorney Warren Olney at 101 San-
some Street, San Francisco, to sign the
Articles of Incorporation of the Sierra
Club.
Article III stated that the purposes
of the club were "To explore, enjoy,
and render accessible the mountain
regions of the Pacific Coast; to pub
lish authentic information concerning
them; to enlist the support and co
operation of the people and the gov
ernment in preserving the forests and
other natural features of the Sierra
Nevada Mountains."
The charter membership totaled
182 and included many faculty mem
bers from the University of California,
Mills College, and the newly formed
Stanford University, along with nu
merous men prominent in the business
and cultural life of San Francisco. One
of the few female charter members
was Wanda Muir, whose father, John,
was elected president, a position he
held until his death in 1914.
To understand why the club was
organized at this particular time, we
must go back to the 1850'sand 1860's
when the newly discovered Yosemite
Valley was fast becoming a tourist at
traction. Its scenic marvels were such
that protective legislation was intro
duced in Congress and signed by
President Lincoln in 1864, ceding the
federally owned Yosemite Valley and
the Mariposa Big Trees Grove to the
state of California to become its first
state park. The park was managed, or
mis-managed, depending upon one's
point of view, by a board of commis
sioners, over which the governor pre
sided.
Early photographs of Yosemite Val
ley reveal the presence of several ho
tels as well as a mill, farms and other
developments which some sensitive
observers at the time felt were out of
place.
Other portions of the Sierra Nevada
also were being explored during these
and later decades, both by those who
reveled in their natural beauty, and by
those intent on commercial exploita
tion. The latter were principally
sheepmen, cattlemen, lumbermen, and
mining prospectors. To denude this
land of its trees and other vegetation
by lumbering or grazing would have
destroyed the watershed that provided
the fundamental irrigation system of
the Central Valley, soon to be the
world's most productive fruit orchard
and vegetable garden.
Thus, in 1890, efforts of pioneer
conservationists resulted in two con
gressional acts, which were signed by
President Benjamin Harrison within
five days of each other. The first bill
established Sequoia National Park
and General Grant National Monu
ment. The second bill expanded Se
quoia and established Yosemite Na
tional Park, which encircled the state-
controlled Yosemite Valley and Mari
posa Big Trees Grove. In 1891, the
Forest Reserves Act— the forebear of
the national forests— became law.
For a number of years, there had
been increasing sentiment favoring
the formation of a voluntary group of
citizens committed to the preservation
of California's mountain heritage. The
248b
incorporation of the Sierra Club in
1892 was a logical consequence.
The club immediately became in
volved in defeating a proposal in
Congress that would have reduced
drastically the size of Yosemite Na
tional Park, then just two years old.
It became readily apparent that the
club would not only have to contend
with commercial interests but also
with all levels of the government it
self, if its purposes were to be
achieved. The following year, the
"Sierra Forest Reserves," which had
been advocated by the club, were es
tablished, covering much of the area
between Sequoia and Yosemite. The
next successful "battle" culminated in
1905, when the state legislature voted
to cede Yosemite Valley and Mariposa
Big Trees Grove back to the federal
government, an action which was ac
cepted by Congress the following
year.
The club's final major legislative
fight during this early period was to
become its most famous: this was the
battle over the Hetch Hetchy Valley.
Formed by the Tuolumne River and
scoured by an ancient glacier, the
Hetch Hetchy lay entirely within the
boundaries of Yosemite National
Park, and though less known than
Yosemite Valley, rivaled it in beauty.
The city of San Francisco wanted to
dam the Tuolumne, thereby flooding
Hetch Hetchy, in order to provide
water for a growing population, and
was lobbying Congress for legislation
that would authorize the dam. The
club opposed the project and fought
back vigorously— but to no avail. The
248c
battle lasted twelve years and ended
in bitter defeat when, in 1913, San
Francisco got its dam. In the course
of this battle, the Sierra Club achieved
its first national recognition and an
historical relationship between Yo-
semite and the Club— one which lasts
until this day— was begun.
John Muir died the following year,
closing an era in the club's history.
During this first 22 years, the club had
i consistently supported the creation of
national forests and parks and had
urged the preservation of coastal red
woods at Big Basin and the giant se
quoias at Calaveras Big Trees.
To serve its increasing member
ship, the club maintained a downtown
office in San Francisco, began pub
lishing the Sierra Club Bulletin in
1893, produced maps of the Sierra
regions, devoted much effort to moun
taineering, and placed climbing reg
isters on the summits of scores of
peaks.
Club Outings
John Muir's spiritual successor was
William £. Colby, who served the
club in many capacities for six dec
ades. He organized and led the first .
annual outing in 1901, held at Yosem-
ite Valley and Tuolumne Meadows.
In 1902, the outing was in the Kings
River region; the following year, at
the Kern River. In 1905, the outing
was for the first time held outside
California, with an ascent of Mount
Rainier.
The charming photographs which
accompany this article portray these
early outings which had far more par
ticipants than any individual outing
today. In 1903, for example, outing
participants totaled 210, almost one-
third of the dub's 663 members. One
hundred and thirty-nine of them made
the ascent of Mt.Whitney.
While the hiking and climbing were
about the same as now, the early out
ings featured tents, army cots, Chinese
cooks using metal ranges, and the op
portunity to pay to have one's laundry
done. The 1902 outing lasted five
weeks, and to accommodate the nearly
200 persons encamped, the transpor
tation of 25,000 pounds of personal
baggage and camp equipment was
required.
The outings were extremely popular
and were more responsible for the
annual growth in club membership
than any other factor. Colby issued a
word of caution, however, pointing
out that while the outings gave dub
members the opportunity to experi
ence wilderness first hand, it was even
more important that the club instill a
lifelong commitment to the preserva
tion of the mountain environment even
when the member could no longer
participate in the outings.
There are dub members and ex-
members living today who can recall
these early outings and who have
memories of encountering John Muir
'.
on the trail, or hearing him at the
campfire, spreading the gospel of
conservation.
The History Committee is trying to
preserve the records of the club's ac
tivities since its founding. Any mem
bers who have photographs, letters,
diaries or other memorabilia, based
either on their own participation or
that of their parents or grandparents,
are encouraged to send these materi
als, either in original or photocopied
form, to: Sierra Club History Commit
tee, 1050 Mills Tower, San Francisco
94104. These items will then be
placed in the "Sierra Club Papers" at
the Bancroft Library, University of
California, Berkeley, where a large
volume of club archives has already
been organized.
Local chapters and groups are urged
to safeguard their own records by de
positing them in a local library, uni
versity, or other institution, where
they can be maintained for future use.
The purpose of such safekeeping is
twofold: first, the personal element —
the nostalgic remembrance of experi
ences and battles fought in company
with others of like sentiment; second,
the study of what has gone before may
help us to improve our "batting aver- ;
age" in the struggles that inevitably
lie ahead in our common efforts to
protect the natural scene for future
generations.
Marshall Kuhn is chairman of the
Sierra Club History Committee.
249
Kuhn: Bancroft estimates that it has about 50,000 items of Sierra Club
material, including the photographs, and when the processing of this
material is completed, a catalog, referred to earlier in this inter
view, will be prepared and distributed to research institutions all
over the country. So that the whole extent of the "Sierra Club Papers"
will be public knowledge.
(16) The Sierra Club history committee has become a focus toward
which all questions regarding the club's history have been and are
being addressed. Thus, we act as an adjunct to the club's own infor
mation services.
(17) The history committee has begun to cooperate quite strongly
with the National Park Service, not only at the John Muir National
Historic Site at Martinez, and Yosemite Valley, but also we are
cooperating with the National Park Service in funding sponsorship
of an oral interview of a retired Park Service executive, George
Collins. Richard Leonard was the one most instrumental in seeing
this through.
(18) I had the privilege of writing an article for the Sierra
Club Bulletin of August-September, 1975, entitled "The Sierra
Club .. .Remembering the Early Years."
•.
[end of insert]
[Insert from tape 13, sides A and B; and from tape 14, side A]
Dorfman: Can you tell me who you have interviewed for the Sierra Club?
Kuhn: Who I personally have interviewed?
Dorfman: Yes.
Kuhn: I've only done one interivew for the Sierra Club and that's a member
of the history committee, a past president of the club, Lewis Clark,
who's an honorary vice-president. He was on the board of directors
for over thirty-five years. He's served in every office in the
club. He's in his late seventies — still skis. He was co- leader of
our trip to Scotland this summer for the club, a marvelous man. I
did six interviews with him, which he is editing now, and then we'll
meet again and then we'll do one final interview. I hope to present
that at the annual meeting in May.
The only other interview I've really done is in regard to Ishi,
which is really not a Sierra Club matter. But in the Sierra Club I've
just done that one interview. I just haven't had time to do any
others. I told the history committee, which met here a week ago,
that there's a lot of difference between being interviewed and being
the interviewer.
2A9a
OHP Assists Sierra Club in Conserving its Record of Service
for the Sierra Club, service is synonymous with the
name 01 the late Marshall Kuhn isee inset) At the
club's annual banquet in Berkeley this Mav. a
special service award was presented to Kuhn tor
his many vears of service Unable to attend
because oi illness, Kuhn was represented at the
gathering bv his wife Caroline
Kuhn was primarily responsible for the formation
of the History Commmee. Feeling that the rapid
growth in members and the dub's involvement in
national environmental issues during the 1960s left
neither time nor resources to document its internal
and external history. Kuhn became instrumental in
setting up a committee for this purpose. After
approval by the club's Board of Directors, the
History Commmee was established in 1970 and the
Bancroft Library at L.C Berkeley designated as the
depository tor the Sierra Club archives.
In Memory of . . .
Marshall H. Kuhn
7976-7978
"Marshall wasn t very good at delegating lobs
because he could probably do it faster ana
better himself. "
— Willa K. Baum.
Head. Regional Oral History Office
Among Marshall Kuhn s many contributions
to the Sierra Club, the one which stands out
most is his role in forming the Histon
Committee see story. Lnul tnu year. Kuhn
seryed as the committee's chair
Kuhn was born in San Francisco, graduated
trom the Lmversitv 01 California at Berkelev
and was an active and prominent member ot
the San Francisco lewish community.
Ann Lage co-Chair 01 the Sierra Club History
Committee, first met Kuhn when she joined
the committee Aside from his extraordinary
energy and warmth, plus his ability to inspire
people. Lage remembers Kuhn s tremendous
sense 01 humor: "Marshall told beautitui
stories. He saw humor that would pass other
people by He saw humoras a human
quality."
In 1977. Kuhn was asked to serve on OHP s
Board 01 Directors to represent the Sierra
Club Proieci.
An oral memoir on Kuhn has been
completed bv Elaine Dorsman and is
currently m the processing stages at the
Regional Oral History Office at L.C.
Berkeiev
Kuhn is survived bv his wife Caroline and
hree children Akson Bruce and Nanc\
The committee first chose to develop a significant
oral history program. Questionnaires were mailed
out to members who had toined the club prior to
1931. More than half responded, and suitable
candidates tor interviewing — some had hiked with
John Muir! — -were identified and prioritized.
Ne«; the commute* turned to Willa K. Baum.
head of the Bancroft's Regional Oral History Office
ROHO: to train volunteers in oral history
techniques. Among the first volunteers were Ann
and Ray Lage, who later, in 1974. became
coordinators of the oral history project and who
now serve as the History Committee's co-Chairs.
non
OHP's involvement in the project came during the
Oral History Association Regional Workshop held
at Fullerton in January 1975 Having learned of the
impressive work being done by CSUF students. Ms.
Lage inquired about the possibilities of developing
a lomt project between the University and the
Sierra Club. Dr. Gary Shumway, the workshop
chairman and then OHP director, shared Lage s
excitement for such an undertaking. Kuhn was
immediately receptive, and within weeks the
protect, under the aegis of the Sierra Club History
Committee, was on its way.
Southern California Sierra Club activists Stanley
lones. Richard Searle. Dorothy Pepper, |. Cordon
Cheiew and Marion lones were selected as the first
interviewees by CSUF students Virginia Bennett.
Paul Clark. Terry Kirker. Frances Levsack and
Cheryl Patterson, respectively. These first
interviews were published as Southern 5/errans in
1976.
Terry Kirker s interview with Dorothv Pepper
highlights the lighter side of the club s high trips:
DP: Ansel ^dams (renowned American photo-
grapner: wrote a series of plays take-offs
on the Creek tragedies (everyone | would
be >o willing to take part in these things . .
One pla\ starred Nathan Clark We called him
Naked Clark . . . Saked . . . was clothed in a
C-string and a big red sort of thing The\
look i tin plate and bent it for a nat. He haa
sword and sandals that were laced up the
side. He was the hero in the play.
Then Paul Pavne appeared, and he was
wrapped like the burlap The toilets were
made out of burlap, and the great ;oke was
that vou never called it "the |ohn" or
anything else except "the burlap." He was
draped in burlap, and he had a roll of toilet
paper on his head and a shovel in his hand.
Ansel gave the prologue and he appeared in
long white underwear . . thin as a rail.
Following the completion of Southern Sierrans. the
History Committee contracted OHP to continue
this joint effort in Southern California Thus.
Southern Sierrans // became a published reality in
1977. Four long-standing members and prominent
leaders ol the Angeles Chapter of the Sierra Club
were interviewed: Irene Charnock. Bob Marshall.
Olivia Johnson and Tom Amneus: the interviewers
were Paul Clark Reed Holderman. Terry Kirker
and Eric Redo— all Sierra Club members
themselves
Man> aspects of the Sierra Club are illustrated in
these documents. In an interview with Reed
Hoiderman Robert Marshall talks about nature
and the value of wilderness:
RM: the crucial thing about wilderness is each
individuals position toward it. Do you come
as a conquerer. or as a friend? If vou come as
a inend we can trust vou. and vou will
probably treat other people the same way
One of the major values ot a wilderness
experience ought to be for people who have
not really gotten the knack ot relating to and
plugging into other people, to go out and
practice The* can come back and be able to
loin societv. to join the world
According to the lages. the committee s goal i» to
expand the club's oral historv program throughout
the country Through their efforts the\ have
helped to Keep the project a going and growing
concern
California State University, Fullerton Oral History Program
Vol. 1, No. 4/Spring, 1978
Vol. 2, No. 1/Summer, 1978
250
The Reliability of Oral History
Dorfman: Yes. Would you like to tell me about that?
Kuhn: When you're the interviewer, you're trying to figure out, "What can
1 ask that would be interesting to learn the answer to?" and as an
interviewee you're trying to give a measured, balanced answer that
will be the truth but, nonetheless, not embarrass anybody and not be
a malicious answer. That's a tough thing to do sometimes, to strike
that balance. But without it, without telling the truth, where are
you?
The Oral History Association's annual colloquium in San Diego in
October was attended by Ann Lage — she is our vice-chairman — and one
of the speakers discussed memory. He felt memory is so unreliable
as to make many of these oral histories worthless. I don't really
believe that. I think there's a compensating factor of people remem
bering things from their youth. Sam Kohs says, "Never distrust your
childhood memories; they're always correct." Of course, there's
unquestionably a tendency over the years to romanticize some of these
things .
For example, some of the stories I tell I start embellishing and
embellishing. I edit what happened to make it a better story,
consciously or unconsciously. But I certainly wouldn't go that far
as to say they're worthless. What I would like to get done, though,
and I've discussed this with Willa Baum, is some situation where if
I read the interview of someone and I feel that his answer was in
correct or incomplete, there should be some place for me to record
my version of that.
Otherwise, it's just that one interviewee's version and there's
no chance for an opposing statement and it's almost like a Rashomon
kind of thing where everybody sees things differently. I say this
particularly if it's either a very important subject or a very
important person being interviewed. There should be some system.
I'm always reminded of a friend of mine, Dick Alberton, who's an
attorney, and his big passion is trying to get perjury really dealt
with. The way it is now, if you are found to be perjuring yourself,
the only thing they throw out in your testimony is that portion of
it that deals with that one subject. His view is that the whole
testimony that you've given should be thrown out and he has a lot of
other things like that.
Well, I'm saying this, that I have read a few interviews of people
where I felt that their version of it, rightly or wrongly, was not
all to be said on it. But oral history has not yet perfected this
technique where people can also have some input. I think there should
be some system.
251
Dorfman: It's an interesting viewpoint.
Kuhn: Particularly where we've interviewed everyone, we've always asked
them, "What do you think about Dave Brower?" Well, we have, of the
twenty-five interviews the Sierra Club has done, maybe fifteen of
them with people who had contact with Brower. If I read someone's
views of Brower and I know that those views are colored by that
person's particular prejudice, there ought to be some way where I
can go on record with that.
Dorfman: As a rebuttal?
Kuhn: Yes. But maybe someday the Oral History Association can put that on
the agenda for their annual colloquium. If you're seeking the truth,
and this is part of it, then there should be simply a mechanical
solution as to how to obtain that.
Ishi
Dorfman: Since we're discussing oral history, this might be a good place for
you to tell me about your Ishi interview.
Kuhn: Well, when Ishi [Ishi in Two Worlds; A Biography of the Last Wild
Indian in North America] first came out, I became aware of it by
reading the review. I said, "Here's a book I'm going to read some
time." When ray daughter bought a copy for her high school class in
social science, I read it and I was absolutely inflamed. My imagina
tion was just soaring at such a marvelous story.
I became very curious about it, and particularly about 1914 when
Ishi took Doctors Waterman and Kroeber back to Deer and Mill Creeks,
along with Dr. Saxton Pope and Pope's eleven-year-old son. Well,
you have the version of three older men and their relationship with
Ishi, but you never had anything on the boy. I thought that must
have been a unique thing for that kid to have had the opportunity.
How come no one ever wrote that down? So I decided to do it.
I first called on Mrs. Kroeber, who by this time had remarried.
Her name is Mrs. Quinn now and she's a regent of the University of
California, as you may know, serving a short unexpired term. She
has this beautiful little Maybeck home in Berkeley. She autographed
my daughter's book and explained the book had really not had a success
until the second version, the child's version, came out, and then both
of them had a greater success. I told her what I had in mind, to
interview Saxton Pope, Jr., and she had some very great hesitancy, I
thought. So I thought, "I'll have to pursue this on my own."
252
Kuhn: I went up to College Avenue where Dr. Pope practiced psychiatry
and I copied all the names off the building directory. I cross
checked them against the records of the Sierra Club and identified
two other psychiatrists who were members of the club and I called
them both and one said he would do for me what I wanted. He would
approach Dr. Pope personally and tell him that the Sierra Club
wanted to interview him. I thought it wasn't a personal approach
if I called him without his knowing me or wrote him a letter. It
would be too easy for him to turn me down.
So he agreed to see me and one afternoon I went over to Berkeley
and we spent an hour of my telling him what I wanted to do, providing
him with some questions. Naturally, speaking since the book had come
out, people reading the book came across his name and would ask him,
"Are you the Dr. Pope who went up with Ishi?" "Oh, yes." So his
memory had been refurbished, renewed by the coming out of the book.
A Related, Unwritten Story
Kuhn: One January, I guess — in '73, I think it was — I went over to his
home in Moraga and got a twenty-nine-minute interview with him.
It's the first interview I ever did. He spoke from notes for about
ten minutes and then I asked him questions and it was a very good
interview. He explained his relationship with Mrs. Quinn.
In her second book, the one for children, she made Dr. Pope, this
eleven-year-old boy who later became a doctor, the protagonist. He
was Ishi's protege and the three older men are hardly even mentioned,
Ishi would show him how to fish, how to trap animals, how to kill a
deer with a bow and arrow. This is completely opposite to what Dr.
Pope was. He wouldn't hurt an animal in the world. She told him
what she wanted to do and then he protested, but she did it anyway,
which I thought was a great violation of confidence.
When I decided — I asked him this question. I said, "In American
Heritage recently, there was a story on Ishi by C.E. Ceram, an
anthropologist, and it has some photographs in there I've never
seen before and these are attributed to Elizabeth Davis." He said,
"That's my older sister — actually younger, but the older of my two
sisters. She lives in Carmel. She's the family historian."
So I got in touch with her and I went down a month later and
interviewed her and, of course, I didn't let her hear her brother's
interview until I had finished with her. She was actually much
closer to Ishi than he was. She held his hand while he was dying
of tuberculosis and so on, whereas her brother's remembrances dealt
253
Kuhn: with three things: first, that trip up to Deer and Hill Creeks;
second, his father and Ishi shooting a bow and arrow behind the
UC Medical School; third, the family going on a picnic out to
Stern Grove, shooting rabbits. And then, also, Ishi coming for
dinner on a Sunday to their family and the way he would watch
everybody — what fork they would pick up and so on.
But the sister was much closer to Ishi, even though she was
younger. She went into this thing of Mrs. Quinn. She was really
much more angry than her brother was, because she said, "It wasn't
until eleven that I even knew I wasn't a boy, because my father
tried to make me the boy, the son that Saxton, Jr. wasn't," because
he didn't have the same interests as his father did.
His father was truly a Renaissance man. He was a surgeon, he
was a singer, a musician, a magician — anything; he could do any
thing and the son wasn't that way. He was inclined toward medicine,
but he was nowhere near as flamboyant as the father, so much so
that when he went to medical school, he went to McGill just so he
wouldn't be at UC San Francisco.
[end tape 13, side A; begin tape 13, side B]
Dorfman: You were saying that he went to McGill.
Kuhn: Yes, and then his father died while he was in medical school and
then he came back and finished at UC San Francisco. His father
actually had been number two in his medical class at UC San
Francisco and his mother was number one. The only reason, of
course, his father married his mother was so that number one would
be in the family. The mother, incidentally, after her husband's
death, became the executive secretary of the California Medical
Association, which is almost unheard of for a woman to do. She
must have been a brilliant woman.
Anyway, after I finished taping Elizabeth Davis, we went out
in the living room of her home, which had been built for her by
Julia Morgan, who did Hearst Castle. Next door her younger sister
Virginia lives, and the two of them and Elizabeth's husband and a
family friend listened to her tape and to Saxton 's tape.
Then I showed a movie which had been made from still shots of
Ishi by a photographer coming down and taking these shots and
making a movie out of it. In other words, the movie was made
using her photographic material, which Elizabeth had inherited
from her mother, and no one had ever had the courtesy to show her
the finished film. So I brought it down from UC and showed her
the film.
254
Kuhn: Then I decided to do some other checking. Various friends of
mine who heard me talk about Ishi would volunteer the information
that they as children had been taken by their parents up to UC to
see Ishi on a Saturday afternoon.
One of them was a woman named Mrs. Samuel Roeder and she said,
"Well, without reference to Mrs. Quinn's book, there might have
been ten or twenty people at the most." In her book she says there
were crowds of hundreds. Well, someone is right and someone is
wrong. I found a number of errors in her book. I sent copies of
the tapes to the Lowie Museum of Anthropology at Berkeley, which
has the largest collection of Ishiana in the world, and I'm also
about half way through dictating a long memorandum summarizing
everything I've learned about Ishi in my various researches.
Dorfman: It should be fascinating.
Kuhn: It is. One thing, for example — Mrs. Kroeber, now Mrs. Quinn, never
knew Ishi. She was a student of Dr. Kroeber, who was then married
to somebody else, and he was teaching a class in Berkeley and he
would describe his latest adventures. She was in San Francisco.
She never knew Ishi, but all through the years she would say to
Kroeber and Waterman, "When are you going to write up this story?"
Finally, they said, "Here's all the material. You write it up."
She did a marvelous job.
It's just that there are certain errors that I think should be
corrected while people are alive who could challenge them. One is
the Indians' attitude toward Ishi. Another is a very simple thing
which could have been checked. All through her book she makes the
point that Ishi was a Yaqui Indian, which was a tribe near the Yana.
That's repeated all the time. Then when he died, his ashes, she
says, were placed in an urn in the Olivet Memorial Cemetery in Colma
and the inscription on the urn is, "Ishi, the last Yana Indian in
1916."
Well, I thought that was strange, so one Saturday I decided to
check this out for myself. I went to Olivet Cemetery. The man in
charge of the office was a fellow who, like me, had been a cub
master in the Richmond district in the early '50s. Being distributed
along the counter was a leaflet consisting of the last four pages of
Mrs. Kroeber 's book, describing the fact that these ashes were at
the Olivet Cemetery, publicizing the name of this unknown Indian,
whereas there were probably 100,000 others who were buried there
without any publicity.
So I went over there to the crypt, the niche, and sure enough it
says, "Ishi, the last Yaqui Indian." So it proved to me that, one,
she had never visited the cemetery; and, two, that the people who
worked in the cemetery had never gone over and checked it out either.
So that will be corrected.
255
Kuhn: Now, Saxton Pope's statement on Ishi's death, I think, is one of
the great statements in the English language: "There dies Ishi, the
last wild man" — something like that. I've read it to my confirma
tion classes every year when I've gone up to the pioneer Jewish
cemeteries because it's a beautiful statement. It says just what
he meant. "He had the soul of a child and the mind of a philosopher,"
I think it was. It's just a beautiful statement.
But the younger sister Virginia and the youngest brother Lee —
neither have had any memory of Ishi. All they knew is what had
been told them, so I didn't bother to interview either of them at
all. But I keep in touch with them and I've sent all the members
of the family and Saxton 's widow copies of his interview.
He died about eight months after I interviewed him and his sister
told me — she said, "You know, I heard his tape that one time when
you played it, but he was alive then, and now that he's dead I don't
know if I could listen to it." But I sent her one and she told me,
"I'm so glad you did because it's the only thing we have of him."
Now, if I had procrastinated, we wouldn't have anything of him
and I say that because in all Sierra Club work we try to interview
the oldest people first. There are three people we interviewed,
past presidents — Francis Farquhar, Phil Bernays, and Harold Bradley —
who are dead now. If we hadn't done them when we did, given them
the priority, we wouldn't have their stories, and all were very,
very influential people. So age is a factor, but he went so fast —
I think it was probably lung cancer. He was an inveterate smoker,
but a very gentle man.
This thing with Mrs. Kroeber was really, I think, a disaster, to
portray him as he wasn't, because he was as gentle as could be. As
a matter of fact, when the men went out hunting with Ishi or fishing,
he would stay in camp pretending he was the cook. He didn't even go
out with Ishi, and Ishi impressed him less than Dr. Kroeber, whose
sleeping bag was near his, and at night Dr. Kroeber would identify
all of the stars and the constellations for him.
Then Dr. Pope said, "I seem to remember — just a vague memory —
that just before we left to come back, Mt. Lassen started to erupt."
But that may be just — that may not be so. So I wrote to Mt. Lassen
Volcanic National Park and they wrote back to me, "His memory is
perfect. Three days or two days before he left, Mt. Lassen started
to erupt and erupted for five years, until 1919." So, again, there
is the childhood memory. It isn't falsified. The Pope family itself
is just utterly fantastic.
256
Kuhn: My uncle was a dentist at UC at the time Ishi was there and I
asked him one time, "Did you know Ishi?" He said, "Did I? He was
the campus character. In the first place, I, along with every other
dental student, paid him fifty cents — that was his coin of the
realm; he loved fifty-cent pieces — for the purpose of allowing us
to make a plaster cast of his mouth. I practiced dentistry for
sixty years; his was the most perfect mouth I ever saw."
Then he said he had another habit. He would take pebbles,
gravel, from this path and let them filter through his hands and
pick the right size and put it on the finger nail of his thumb or
one of his fingers and aim it at a light pole across the street,
and he hit it every time. [Chuckles] He said, "He was unbelievable."
Dorfman: How do you feel about oral history?
Kuhn: Oh, I love it. I love it because you're going to get things there
that you'll never get any other way from people who never take the
time to write down what they do. They don't take the time. They
don't think they have the ability to write. They're afraid of it,
who would read it. But they'll talk.
Let me give you an example. There's a man here named Lawrence
Arnstein, "Mr. Public Health." He's now in his upper nineties and
he was interviewed by Bancroft. But I wanted to get his impression
of John Muir. I had heard him speak at lunch once. He said that
he had belonged to the Sierra Club briefly and was on a mountain
trip with John Muir and he had never met a more brilliant speaker.
So I interviewed him one time in his home and then I kept the
recorder on and asked him about these other things on public health.
He told a story about Dr. Geiger that was not in his original inter
view by Bancroft and which Willa Baum has added.
Dr. Geiger was the director of public health and Arnstein was
sort of a consultant to him. Geiger told him one time, in about
1938, that he was going to Germany and get a medal from Goer ing.
Now, Geiger loved medallions. He'd go to these diplomatic recep
tions and have a whole chest full of medals, decorations from
foreign countries. Of course, Arnstein, being Jewish, thought this
was obscene and he told him so. Geiger had the bad taste when he
came back to call Arnstein to come over to his house. He wanted to
show Arnstein something and when Arnstein got there he showed him
the medals Goering gave him and, of course, Arnstein lashed him
again. So this we have on tape now.
Well, this is exactly the same thing that happened with [Charles]
Lindbergh, as narrated at the oral history conference colloquium I
went to in 1974 at Jackson Hole by Alden Whitman, who was then
obituarian for the New York Times. He became very friendly with
Lindbergh. When Lindbergh went to Germany in '38 to get a medal
257
Kuhn: from Goering, his wife Anne Morrow Lindbergh told him, "You are
through with the American people if you take that medal." Lindbergh
was so naive — not anti-Semitic, but naive — that he didn't realize
what he was doing. So it was a parallel — "Come over and we'll give
you a medal," for people who can't resist honors.
Oral history I had just — well, I really bit off more than I
could chew. I had no idea what I was getting into when I first
suggested this to the Sierra Club, but it's become fascinating.
Now that we have twenty-five interviews on the shelf, and we'll
have maybe six or eight more this year, of stories that are really
important to the history of conservation and would never have been
achieved any other way, I really feel a sense of accomplishment.
Even though I've only done one myself, I've gotten the other ones
done and the club has really supported it. If you take the time
to read these things, you get a tremendous amount out of them.
We have just notified a large number of conservation organizations
and libraries with archives in conservation of the availability of
these by purchase at cost, so we'll probably sell them all over the
country. I hope so. It doesn't do any good if we have them on the
shelf. They have to be read. I think that that could be one of the
major problems with oral history.
If I want to read Mrs. Kinder 's interview, I have to either go to
Magnes or to Bancroft, even though I tried to convince Mrs. Kinder,
inasmuch as I was responsible for having her interviewed, "Why can't
you lend me your own copy?" But she's reluctant to do that, not
realizing that I can read the same copy and she's just making it
inconvenient for me to do it, that's all.
There sort of has to be some better method of distributing these
things or they won't be read by people who don't have the time to go
over and sit in Berkeley to read these things, unless they're a
graduate student, and that's a very elite classification. I'm not
knocking it, and maybe the greatest contribution will come out of
that, but there ought to be something for others whose interest
isn't quite that elevated.
Dorfman: Perhaps that's another contribution you'll make.
Kuhn: Well, there could be a series of them in the San Francisco Public
Library. As a matter of fact, that gives me an idea. I think I'll
try to get some of them bought by the San Francisco Public Library.
I'll see if we're on their list. You might have to use them there,
but it's certainly a lot simpler than going to Berkeley. I wouldn't
be surprised but that some of the people who are on the board of the
Friends of the Public Library are active in the Sierra Club. It's a
good idea.
258
Dorfman: How important has your work as chairman of the history committee of
the Sierra Club been to you?
Kuhn: To me?
Dorfman: To you.
Kuhn: It's been delightful because I'm involved with people who are
professional historians or past presidents of the Sierra Club or
who have M.A.s in history, and I'm the only one who never even
took a history course in college, [chuckles] which is very valuable
because if I were a true historian and Ansel Adams sent me all his
papers for thirty-eight years as its director, I would sit in my
basement and try to read them all.
But, not being a professional historian, I've become a collector.
I take the stuff to Berkeley and go out and get some more. My job
is to save all these things while they're available and not worry
about someone else analyzing them, because this stuff has to be
used.
Dorfman: Do you see that as a major problem?
Kuhn: What? The funding?
Dorfman: No, the fact that the material is not used.
Kuhn: Oh, absolutely. Let me give you a parallel. Every industrial
corporation in the United States eventually makes a film. Some do
it in a big way. These films are first distributed by the company.
Then they find it's too much bother. They don't have the facilities
for reviewing the frames or repairing them, so they give them to
someone like Modern Talking Picture Company who are paid to distrib
ute it. Now the film libraries of this country have maybe a million
films, most of them just sitting there. Getting the stuff to be
used is of equal or greater importance than making it.
When something's brand new — for example, in the Welfare Federation
of UJA, someone wants a film that was taken in Israel last week; last
year's film isn't good enough. People have seen it at a meeting, a
rally, or on television. What's new? Well, of course, Israel is a
country that changes every day. What I'm saying is that Americans
are so used to things that are new, that the stuff that is old, even
if it's just as good — parts of a paper mill or a steel plant. That
doesn't change that much, but it's sitting there. To get it used is
a big trick.
As I say, millions and millions of dollars have been put into
producing these things. They're great films and, of course, they
have to be used right. In the school system you have to be sure
that you're using it not as a substitute for teaching but as an
adjunct to it.
259
Kuhn: But it's the same thing with these oral histories. They've got
to be made more available. They've got to be brought down to the
local level. Someone in L.A., in the Angeles Chapter, has to be
able to go to the chapter office and use it, and that's what they're
doing. The Angeles Chapter is buying a whole set of these histories.
Dorfman: Do you see the funding as a problem as well?
Kuhn: The funding for what part of it?
Dorfman: For oral histories.
Kuhn: You mean for copies of it? No, it's just the cost of photocopying
and binding. No, I don't think that's a big problem. It's mostly
organizing to do it. Actually, I shouldn't be too concerned because
the oral history program at Sierra Club is still relatively new and,
as I say, we've just now announced the availability. The first oral
history we've completed was in 1974. It took us four years to really
get rolling.
So we'll see who buys these things and we'll get local chapters
to put some pressure on their universities or public libraries where
there's a large population of Sierra Club members to get these sets.
If they can't buy the whole thing, they can buy appropriate portions
of it. It will come.
But I'm saying that what has to be one of the committee's concerns
is distribution. You just can't put it on the shelf somewhere and
think it's going to be used. It's not going to be used. First of
all, it's under lock and key, as it should be, and people don't say,
"I'm going to spend my next twenty-eight lunch hours walking twelve
blocks to the Sierra Club to read a part of Richard Leonard's inter
view." There has to be a better way.
Writing the Introduction to Stickeen
Dorfman: You wrote the introduction to the reprint of John Muir's book,
Stickeen. *
Kuhn : Ye s .
Dorfman: How did that come about?
Kuhn: Well, when you are involved in the history of the Sierra Club, you're
interested in Muir. So I'd heard about this book and I went to the
public library, the main one in San Francisco. The whole library
system had one copy dating back to the last printing in 1937 and you
John Muir, Stickeen: The Story of a Dog, Introduction by Marshall
Kuhn (New York: Doubleday, 1974), pp. vii-xiii.
260
Kuhn: had to read it there. I thought, "That's a shame that children
grow up without having this book available." It's just a marvelous
story of adventure, and this dog, and Muir when he describes the
most exciting day of his life.
So I tried to get the club to reprint the book, to buy the paper
back rights. Houghton Mifflin had originally put it out in hardback.
And the club didn't move on it.
When I was in New York having some dealings with Doubleday, I was
talking to one of the editors and he was very much interested in
Muir. I had a copy of Stickeen and I said, "Here, have you ever
read this?" So he read it at night and I saw him the next day and
he said, "We'll do it. We'll buy the paperback rights from Houghton
Mifflin and we'll pay you to write the introduction and we'll pay
you for the idea," and that's the way it came about. It came out
about three years ago.
Its distribution has been very, very meager, about 8,000 copies,
because with a paperback they don't have enough budget to do much
advertising or promotion, but it's a delightful book, really delight
ful. I'm trying to get — actually trying to see how many other Muir
books we can get into paperback.
Of the twelve books he wrote, several of which were published
posthumously, only four were available in paperback. Almost all of
them are available now in hardback through a publisher named Norman
Berg in Georgia who's a salesman for Houghton llifflin and who owns
this little press and he brings out the Muir books, reproducing the
original type. But they cost, hardback, $14.95 and that's a little
steep for the average reader.
Dor f man: What other writing have you done?
Kuhn: Oh, nothing that's ever been published. I've written little sermons
here and there and reports. I wrote a sort of a history of the
Beth El Religious School for their ad book, which will be coming out
about now in connection with their twenty-fifth anniversary. Just
little things here and there, humor things sometimes, nothing really
of any length or substance. I just haven't really devoted myself to
it. Did I ever tell you about the greatest thing I ever wrote?
Dor f man: No.
Kuhn: I was in a class in English at Berkeley. You had to write a paper
describing a technical process. Well, all my life I'd visited my
uncle's office. He was a dentist in Oakland and the train passed a
shredded wheat factory. So I decided, "I'm going to go to the
shredded wheat factory," and I did.
261
Kuhn: I wrote it up and I really polished that. So, when I came to
class, the instructor said, "Do you want to hear some beautiful
writing? Let me read you this." She started reading my composition
and, of course, I sat there mortified. It was really great and it
must have been great because she picked it.
Then, at the end, she said, "Now, I'm going to read you something
that I think — I want to hear your viewpoints on this, whether it's
appropriate to end it this way," because at the end of the trip,
when you go through the shredded wheat factory, they sit you down
in the cafeteria and they give you a shredded wheat biscuit with
some jam on it. So that was enough for me. I had to put in the
oldest joke I knew. I said, "That night I dreamed I was back in
the shredded wheat factory and when I woke up the next morning,
half of my mattress was gone."
Well, the class roared. She said, "That's terrible! He ruined
the whole composition." So we had a big discussion as to whether I
ruined it or I didn't and I was sitting there and I was completely
mortified because I knew I had ruined it, but I just couldn't resist
it.
Dorfman: What year were you in?
Kuhn: Oh, this was about 1940 or '41. It was after I had gone back to
college after three years out. I really poured my heart out in that
thing. It actually was a beautiful description of the whole process
and [chuckles] if I just could have resisted putting that humor in
there, I would have gotten an A. I don't know what I got — an A-
maybe — but it was amazing the people who would jump to my defense,
because I thought I had no defense.
Dorfman: I understand that you also wrote an early history of the Sierra Club
which was published in the Sierra Club Bulletin.
Kuhn: I wrote one article, right. Yes, that was a lot of pleasure for
that. What made it good was that the editor of the Bulletin
selected some beautiful photographs to illustrate the article. It
was a good article and one phrase I used, I think, is very apt. I
described the forest growth of the Sierras as the fundamental irriga
tion system of the Central Valley, which it is. It's the trees
holding the water that really gives a sustained flow and if you rip
that forest cover off, then all you get is floods and droughts and
everything else.
I think I could write if I had the time, but I never — it's very
time-consuming. If you really want to do something right, it takes
endless polishing. Even that little introduction to Stickeen I
stalled for months. I remember getting telegrams and phone calls
from New York: "When are you going to do it?" So, finally, I'd
262
Kuhn: gotten all of Huir's books from the public library and I had had
them there for months and I had to pay huge fines on about three or
four of them, about three dollars apiece. Finally, I sat down one
Saturday and I wrote it out in an hour, typed it, polished it up in
ten minutes. That was it. But I tortured myself for months. I
just kept procrastinating.
Dorfman: Had you done the reading prior to that?
Kuhn: [Chuckles] Oh, yes, but that's got nothing to do with it. That's
got nothing to do with it. You can't explain a procrastinator .
There's no logic to it; it's masochism.
Publication, Unrelated to the Sierra Club
Dorfman: There is a book that was published by Doubleday in 1949, Diabetic
Menus, Meals, and Recipes. You had something to do with that,
didn't you?
Kuhn: Yes. This is sort of the role I play, sort of as an intermediary or
as a catalyst. I met a woman named Betty West socially during the
raid-'AOs and then she and her husband, after the death of their son
in World War II, moved up to a place called Freshwater, outside of
£ureka. I was up there on Blue Shield business and I called on them.
She showed me this manuscript and said that she had been a very
severe diabetic and had been traveling around because her husband
was a Marine officer and when she got to UC San Francisco she was
out of control. When she was under control, she asked the doctor,
Dr. Salvatore Lucia, what she could cook for her family and he gave
her a list and said, "Just eliminate these foods forever from your
diet." She said, "That's ridiculous. I love all these things."
"Well, you can't have them." She said, "I'll buy a diabetic cook
book." He said, "Nobody's ever written one." He was just a little
wrong. There had been one written before that. She said, "I'll
write one." He said, "Ha, ha, ha."
So she went back to Cal. She was a schoolteacher. She studied
dietetics and came up with this idea that a diabetic could eat any
thing he wants, so long as daily intake of protein, carbohydrates,
fats, minerals, vitamins, and total calories are what he needs for
his activity. She wrote this manuscript and then moved up to Fresh
water and didn't know what to do with it.
So I said, "Let me see what I can do with it." I had all her
computations checked; I got Dr. Russel Rypins, who is head of the
Mt. Zion Metabolic Clinic, it was called, to do the introduction;
263
Kuhn: and I sold it to Doubleday. They thought, "Well, we'll print 5,000
copies. How many diabetics can there be? There are more cook books
every year. She has a very highly specialized one." Well, the
answer is, it's never out of print. It sold 150,000 copies.
In 1959, we revised it to include a chapter on sucaryl, the
cyclamate sweeteners, because in '49 only saccharin was known, and
now we've just revised it again. Dr. Rachmiel Levine, who was then
medical director of the City of Hope, and his dietician, Nancy
Greene Eash, have revised it because, first of all, we have a whole
new chapter on sweeteners, so regardless of whether the government
allows or disallows either or both saccharin and cyclamates, it's
covered. It also covers convenience foods, alcohol intake, whereas
Mrs. West didn't even discuss alcohol, as if we can't even handle
that. The completely revised edition should be out the week after
next.
Of course, there are huge numbers of diabetics, and for every
known one, in the millions, there's at least one who hasn't been
diagnosed yet even though he is diabetic.
Dorfman: Is that so?
Kuhn: Absolutely. So this had been a boon, because in addition to helping
the diabetic contend with this, the book can be used with recipes
for the whole family so that if there is anyone else in the family
who has a diabetic tendency, this will forestall its coming out.
It's been a very successful project. I think it's probably sold
more than all other diabetic cook books ever put out together. Of
course, she had the right idea.
Dorfman: That too should have been a source of great satisfaction.
Kuhn: Well, not only satisfaction, but I own 20 percent of the book.
Dorfman: That's even better.
Kuhn: Yes.
Sierra Club Strong Personalities
Dorfman: We talked a little bit last time, to come back to the Sierra Club,
about sacred cows which you mentioned.
Kuhn: Sacred cows. You mean strong personalities?
Dorfman: Yes.
264
Kuhn:
Dorfman:
Kuhn:
Kuhn:
When we finished Richard Leonard's interview, which was the first
one done completely by Bancroft — you might say the first completely
done professionally — because the Sierra Foundation had funded it,
I presented the first copies to the Foundation at their trustees'
meeting in February of '76 and then, officially, I presented it at
the club at their annual meeting in May of that year. I talked
about the interview and Dick Leonard spoke and I read them this
particular chapter, the particular episode which is very, very
funny about the way Sierra Club outings were and how the dietary
needs were taken care of.
Why don't you tell us about that?
Dick Leonard, of course, is one of the top conservationists in the
world, and in this two-volume oral history, which was done by Susan
Schrepfer as an interviewer — she's also doing Brower and Dr. Wayburn —
he recalls that in 1901 Muir and Colby got the idea of having these
Sierra Club High Trips to get the membership out and see the Sierra,
and that way they'd be better able to protect it. So Colby became
chairman of the outings committee and the board of directors of the
club ruled that those funds for outings had to be kept completely
separate from the club funds because if you made a mistake —
[end tape 13, side B; begin tape 14, side A]
So from 1901 on, until the present, the outings program has been
funded differently from the rest of the Sierra Club's budget. Well,
this went along fine under Colby's chairmanship until 1936, at which
point Francis Farquhar became president of the Sierra Club, and he was
a CPA.
So he said, "Colby, I want an accounting of all the income and
expense for the outings program for the past thirty-six years," and
Colby said, "Go to hell. I quit," and the rest of the committee
quit with him. He said, "I handle this out of my own pocket and in
thirty-six years we made $2,800. That's less than $100 a year, but
if it was a loss I would have lost it, and I'm not going to put up
with this kind of nonsense."
So they had to have a new committee and they said, "Richard Leonard,
you've been with the club for four years. You're the new chairman of
the outings program." Colby said, "Here's the $2,800, because that's
what we made. Some years we make; some years we lose."
Then Leonard asked, "Do you have a list of food?" because you take
200 people into the Sierra plus fifty staff for four weeks sometimes.
And Colby said, "No, I don't have any food list." Leonard was
incredulous. "You don't have any food list? How do you do it?"
265
Kuhn: He said, "Well, I'm a busy lawyer. So I pick up the phone two weeks
before the trip and I call the Sierra Club and ask them how many are
going and they tell me. Then I call Goldberg Bowen and I say, 'Send
food for 250 people for the Sierra for four weeks,' and that's how you
do it." [Laughter]
Leonard said, "At that point, I figured he could have probably
saved by doing it differently," because Goldberg Bowen was the fancy
food purveyor in those days — rattlesnake meat and all that stuff.
Well, when I read this story to them, they just absolutely cracked
up and then when I did it at the annual meeting, I said, "All you
trip leaders out there who are measuring the grains of salt and
pepper, that's the way it was done in the old days!"
But, anyway, I floundered around there, and among the Sierra
Club trustees which started out in 1960 — the Sierra Club Foundation —
the board was all the past presidents and there are still a lot of
past presidents on the board. There were seven men there among
those trustees that day who were being interviewed, were interviewed,
or about to be interviewed, and I told them, "The way we've got you
now, the way we get our funding, is because every president of the
Sierra Club Foundation wants to get interviewed, so we're playing on
your vanity. I want you to know that, because it's a resource we'll
never run out of." [Chuckles]
Of course, the men who were the trustees of the Foundation are
the men who really have seen how the club operates. Some of them,
a number of them, were on the board for over thirty years, which is
not possible any longer. We've amended the bylaws. But in those
days people just went on and on. There were some great men, really,
and women too. We interviewed a number of women, both in Northern
California and Southern California. One of the chapters that we
interviewed was called "High Jinks at the High Camps."
I'd like to mention a few other activities of the history committee
beyond the oral histories, which is the most important part. There's
the storage of our papers at Bancroft, the Sierra Club papers, which
will be a huge archival resource, and eventually Bancroft will put
out a catalogue, which will be distributed all over the country, of
the kind of files we have available. We have 10,000 photographs.
Almost all of them are unidentified as to place, time, or subject
matter. People will carry their photographic equipment up to the
Sierra in tremendous quantities and it won't take five minutes to
write on the back of the print who it was.
Then we put together a photographic exhibit called "A Hundred
Years of Yosemite Photography," which still circulates around the
country. These are one or two prints by maybe fifteen of the great
photographers dating back to 1859 through 1970 — in fact, later than
that. Edward Mybridge, Taber, Ansel Adams, Richard Coughman — just
266
Kuhn: some fabulous stuff, one or two of each of their best prints. Some
of the ones taken in 1870 are as good as the ones taken today. Here
they had to lug all this stuff, all this equipment, by muleback, wet
plates — just unbelievable.
There were two Joseph LeContes; both of them were charter members
of the club: Joseph LeConte, who was a professor at Cal when it
started in 1870, and his son, "Little Joe," who was also a professor
at Berkeley, and he took over 4,000 glass plates of the Sierra.
Ansel Adams catalogued these and we have them now over at Bancroft.
They were in a vault at the Bank of California for maybe forty years.
Then we've done a lot of work at LeConte Lodge in the Florida
Valley. This is a lodge owned by the Sierra Club and built in
memory of Joseph LeConte, Sr., who was in the valley in 1901 when
the first High Trips took off, and the son was married that day and
left on a High Trip. Joseph LeConte stayed in the valley and he
passed away quietly the next day. This lodge was built in his
memory and it's the summer headquarters of the club. We have a
lot of scientific exhibits, ecology, educational programs for children
and adults, every summer there. It's just a beautiful thing.
There was a woman named Barbara Lachalt who with her husband went
all around the world wherever Muir had gone — Alaska, Scotland,
Wisconsin — and took slides. Along with slides they obtained from
other sources, they produced 120 slides which I call "John Muir's
Life and Legacy." I've shown that many times. Any Sierra Club
chapter can show it. But she's a schoolteacher and she's built up
the collection now to about 200 because she can take a whole week
to show it to her class. We don't have that luxury.
Last summer I was up in the valley — in the summer of '76 — and gave
two showings of this, and this year she went up, which was very
great — the woman who had taken the slides — and it's just a beautiful
presentation. People really don't realize the extent of Muir's life
and accomplishments.
Then we've done a lot of work out at Martinez, the John Muir
National Historic Site. On the top floor there's Muir's — what he
called a "scribble den" — facing north, where he wrote, and immediately
south of that is his former bedroom, which is now the Sierra Club
Room, dedicated to his accomplishments as the founding president,
with appropriate photographs and exhibits.
Last year we helped the community of Martinez put on a bicenten
nial pageant because the only thing really that ever happened to
Martinez was John Muir living there. This is a delightful little
historical pageant about Muir's life, what the people and the
267
Kuhn: community thought about him and his life, and everybody in the
community was involved in this, all ages. It was really a lovely
little presentation.
Then I was involved in — in January of '75, the National Park
Service was making a film called Interpreting the Bicentennial. It
was a training film for National Park Service personnel, anticipating
the bicentennial. They went from East to West and this was the last
place. They not only did the John Muir National Historic Site, but
also the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and for some reason
they asked me to come out and participate.
I had no idea what I was going out there for. I sat on the steps
of the lluir home where he had sat and they began asking me questions —
what did I think of the bicentennial? My response was that the United
States next year (in '76, that would be) has an 8 percent unemployment
rate still. It's more opportunity for a year of prayer than for self-
congratulation. Well, I guess we were talking for about ten or
fifteen minutes. I was very restrained in my response because I think
of it as a very somber time, a time for study, rededication, rather
than a "ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay" type of thing. I figured, "The govern
ment is represented by the Park Service. They'll never permit any of
my views to be heard."
Several months later they said, "Come on out and see the finished
film. You're in it in five places." What they had done — they sort
of divided things into subjects. Maybe they had fifteen different
views and then they would go on to the next subject and the same
people might be involved. They had, following me every time, a man
who in his active days was considered one of the philosophers of the
National Park Service movement. He's an elder gentleman, a very,
very perceptive guy. I was really amazed that the government would
take this. But that was the general thought of everybody, that this
is a very serious time in American history. I was very, very pleased
with this thing. We've shown that a couple of times.
Now, also at Bancroft we have several hundred mountaineering films
and conservation films contributed by various sources. One of these
is "A Sense of Mountains." One of the members of our committee,
Larry Dawson, who is the film consultant for the Sierra Club, checks
all these out to make sure they're in perfect shape and maybe even
transfers them onto permanent film, and they're in storage. Eventually
we hope to put over there mint copies of all the films the Sierra
Club itself has made. This is a major film resource.
267a
San Francisco Unified School District
February 23, 1976
Community Takes Part
In John Muir Re-opening
M«nh*ll Kuhn ^ret*nti a pertrait of John Muir
to ttvdcnt Mjrcui Zbinden »t r»c«nt ra-o^«n-
<•! c*r»wvcmici at JeKn Muir tcK>el.
Hundreds of parenu and friends were
part of an over-flow crowd at the re-open
ing and re-dedication ceremonies for John
Muir School which had been closed for
over a year due to earthquake safety re
construction work as required by the state
Field Act.
Strong support for the public schools
and John Muir in particular was evidenc
ed by the crowd and comments made by
various speakers.
Harvey Luster, president of the Page-
Laguna Streets Association, emphasized
the community's recognition and appreci
ation of the high educational standards
and quality education offered by Mrs.
Leola Havard, principal, and staff.
Ms. Fannie McElroy, parent, spoke of
the friendly, warm spirit — the "John
Muir" way — in the parent/school rela
tionships.
Marshall Kuhn, chairman of the His
tory Committee of the Sierra Club, pre
sented a gift on behalf of that organization
of a framed portrait of John Muir, found
ing president of the Sierra Club.
. . . John Muir School Re-opens
(Continued from Page 1 )
Mr. Kuhn, an executive with the Jewish
Welfare Federation and treasurer of the
Strybing Arboretum Society, told the aud
ience about the John Muir Nature Trail
which students in the school had helped to
institute in Golden Gate Park in 1970 and
about the history of the great American
whom the U. S. Post Office has honored
with a memorial stamp.
A gift of a book by John Muir, Stickeen,
the story of a dog who tramped the Alas
kan glacier with Muir, was donated to the
school's library as a personal gift by Mr.
Kuhn.
267b
Martinez News-Gazette, Vol. 121, No. 75, Thursday, April 20, 1978
John Muir Award
To Conservationist
The widely respected conser
vationist and community leader,
Marshall Kuhn, has become the first
recipient of the newly established
John Muir Memorial Association
Conservation Award.
This award is being given an
nually to the person "who best
exemplifies the civic virtues of John
Muir in his or her concern for both
the environment and the human
community."
Kuhn, a resident of San Fran
cisco, has shown a lifetime of con
cern for his fellow man and the en
vironment.
One of his contributions to the
community was quite literal: he is a
charter member of the Red Cross
"Ten Gallon Club" made up of those
who have donated more than 10
gallons of blood.
He has acted as treasurer of the
Strybing Arboretum Society of
Golden Gate Park, and, in that
capacity, raised money for the
establishment of the John Muir
Nature Trail in that park.
A life-long member of the Sierra
Club, he conceived the idea of an
oral history committee to tape
record the recollections of pioneer
conservationist before they pass on.
Bancroft Library, University of
California, considers these tapes to
be a unique and precious con
tribution to the history of the state
and nation.
Kuhn sponsored and led hun
dreds of young people on trips into
the high country of the Sierra. For
many city children, it was their first
introduction to wild nature.
Due to his lifelong interest in
trees and the Strybing Arboretum,
the award to him took the form of a
Japanese Bonsai tree.
The award was presented by
Justice A.F. Bray at the annual din
ner this week of the John Muir
Memorial Association.
The tree was accepted by
Caroline Kuhn in place of her
husband who was unable to attend
due to illness.
268
Ryozo Azuma, an Admirer of John Muir Since 1914
Kuhn: Then I want to talk about Ryozo Azuma. This was a Japanese man
who, in his twenties, was a great mountain climber; all his life
he was. Did I tell this story before?
Dor f man: No, you didn't.
Kuhn: Well, he was climbing lit. Rainier in Washington in 1914 and he
stopped at a place on the way up called Camp Muir, where lluir had
stayed in his ascent of Rainier. So he asked, "Who was Muir?"
When he was told who he was, he immediately wrote Muir at Martinez
and asked, "Can I visit you?" and Muir said, "Certainly." He came
down to visit Muir, spent several days with him, and Muir convinced
him to take a job as cabin boy on a government vessel going up to
rescue somebody in the ice north of Alaska. The vessel got ice
bound and Azuma spent eighteen months wandering around the Arctic.
He was one of the founders of the Japanese National Park. Along
the way, he wrote a number of biographies and twenty-seven other
books.
Well, he came back to the United States several times, and two
years ago he and his wife, on their wedding anniversary, made the
final trip. He was eighty-seven or eighty-eight; he'll be ninety
on January 1, 1978. Bill Kimes, from Mariposa, who's the outstanding
Muirist in the world, was their host and took them to Sequoia, where
they'd been many times before; also, the Grand Canyon and Yosemite.
But before that he brought them out to Martinez. Azuma had never
been to Martinez since 1914, and here he was in Muir's home. So the
Park Service gave a luncheon for him. My wife and I were privileged
to sit at the same table with him and his wife, and during the program
he told about meeting Muir, how he dropped on his knees.
I had my picture taken with him on the steps of the Martinez adobe
there [1975] and it may be in the Sierra Club Bulletin because I got
the members of the board of directors to make him an honorary life
member of the club. He recently wrote a letter to the president of
the club and to me, having found out from Kimes that I was the
instigator of this. His language is so delightful because it's what
he really thinks, this Japanese gentleman writing English, and he
thanks us profusely for this great honor.
As I say, he will be ninety and he's had some ill health recently,
but he was a great mountain climber, a great ornithologist, and a
great botanist. Ryozo Azuma. [Spells out name] He's close to the
royal family and to everyone in Japan involved in national parks, and
it stemmed from Muir. So it's an extension of Muir's influence.
269
Dorfman: His first experience with Muir was in —
Kuhn: In 1914. In fact, that was the only time, because Muir died later
that same year. But he was so imbued with what Muir had done and
written that he became a Muir faddist all the rest of his life.
He's just an unbelievable guy, a tough little man. I hope the
Bulletin runs an article on him, because his accomplishments are
just unbelievable.
Now, lastly, over here on my coffee table there's a book called
John Muir's America, which came out about a year and a half ago.
The photography is by a man named DeWitt Jones, who is as skillfull
in still photography as he is in motion picture photography, which
is very rare. He did the photography for a National Geographic
article about five years ago on Muir.
[Tom] Watkins [author of the text of John Muir's America] is now
one of the editors of American Heritage, but several years ago he
did some writing for American West and also for the Sierra Club.
One of his great strong points is his use of graphic material,
illustration. He has resources you wouldn't believe. I had heard
about this film that Jones had made called John Muir's Sierra, and
I got him and Watkins together. They did this book together, and
on page ten of the book they pay a very nice tribute to me for having
brought them together, because this was the concept of the whole
book.
Watkins took an unusual approach. In three places in the book he
pretends that he's a contemporary of Muir, and the publisher wanted
to know my opinion of how this could be done without people getting
confused, like with the "Man from Mars," Orson Welles. So we put
those three portions in italics, hoping that that would be enough
difference in type and would be enough to call to their attention
the fact that there was something different here.
But, unfortunately for the authors, later the same year National
Geographic came out with a book with almost the same title, John
Muir's Wild America, at $4.95, whereas their book sells for $19.95.
And National Geographic has some 8,000,000 members of whom 90,000
have subscribed to any book they publish at $4.95; regardless of
what it is, just send it.
So, by that time, American West Publishing had sold out to Crown
Publishers, who figured that our book, John Muir's America, can't
compete with the other one just on price. So they printed several
hundred copies and they held off on any further, so you can't even
buy the book anymore. But it's an absolutely gorgeous book and, as
I say, it's Jones's photography.
270
Kuhn: In the National Geographic book they have some extra pictures
which you might say Jones had done on their budget years before for
their article in the National Geographic, and the cover photograph
is by him, even though every other photograph in the book is by
somebody else. He's a great photographer. He lives over in Mar in
near Point Reyes. DeWitt Jones, a great photographer.
So those were some of the activities that we get involved with
on the history committee. I get all sorts of correspondence from
people who either want to give material or want us to identify some
photographs. You may remember that I told you that I got material
from a woman in Texas, merely because we have a history committee.
She didn't know to whom else to send it. She asked if we wanted
material about her grandfather, who was in the Donner Party as a
boy of ten.
We got all the material from her. She remembered him telling her.
While her husband was very ill in the hospital, it gave her something
to do, and she admitted in the letter that her own children and grand
children weren't interested in the story. She wanted it to go some
where where there would be interest and, of course, we gave it to
Bancroft because they have more material on the Donner Party than
anyone else. She sent along little arrow points that her grandfather
collected crossing Utah and things like that.
On the trip, he became very close to a man named Moses
Schallenberger, whose name is on the Donner Monument up there by
Donner Lake, and they split, one with one group and one with the
other group. And for fifty years this man, this grandfather of
this woman, resettled in the southern part of the San Joaquin
Valley, and every time anybody came through he'd just ask them,
"Did you ever meet a man named Moses Schallenberger?" Fifty years
later, in 1900, he found out he was living in San Jose, and they
were reunited. Isn't that amazing?
Dorfman: It certainly is.
Kuhn: So this is a little history byplay that has nothing to do with the
Sierra Club, but it's historical and it deals with the West.
One time we got a photograph — not a photograph — a painting.
Muir's brother had painted Muir about 1865 and I'd seen that
portrait reproduced someplace, but no one knew where the original
was. Then five years ago a woman came into the Sierra Club Library
and said, "This has been in our house in Pacific Grove for eighty
years. Would you like it?"
This was the original painging. And if you are familiar with
Muir's life—part of his family lived in Pacific Grove, which is
a religious community, in the early days. Even Stevenson remarked
271
Kuhn: upon that in 1879. Those were the days like Chautauqua circuits,
and he went through there — Stevenson — at a time other than summers,
and all the places were boarded up.
But by having this historical facility, we've shown people that
we're interested in our own history, in collecting archives, and
people offer us things. If we didn't have it, no one would be even
interested in collecting the history of the Sierra Club. So it's
been a very popular committee because it started seventy-eight years
after the Sierra Club was founded, and no one had ever paid attention
to it before.
They've been too busy with everything else, and I assured the
board of directors of the club that we would never use their time
or efforts to divert from their principal thing, which is to save
America. This would be something extra that the history committee
would do on its own, and we've pretty much kept that pledge.
Dor f man: Was there much material that might have been lost forever?
Kuhn: A tremendous amount of stuff. Absolutely, because not only did the
club put its material in Bancroft, but I got it from scores and
scores of members, some as a result of our interviewing the people,
others just by their knowing that we have this.
Of course, everything we put in Bancroft is an irrevocable gift.
The Sierra Club no longer owns it and so it's protected. Now, again,
that material has to be used, and eventually students will be doing
their master's and doctoral theses using the Sierra Club archives.
But they're not fully organized yet because, one, the quantity of
stuff we've sent them is tremendous; and, two, a lot of it was dis
organized — just cartons and cartons of files, not labeled. They have
to be sorted by the archivist, and Marie Byrne, who is the assistant
head of the manuscript division at Bancroft, probably knows as much
about the Sierra Club as anybody else because she's handled literally
millions of pieces of paper, sorting it out and filing it. And, of
course, this has — I don't know if I mentioned this before — this has
an economic effect. Did I tell you about this lawyer, Johnson?
Dorfman: Yes, you did.
Kuhn: Now, this is $2 1/2 million worth of economic advantage of having
proper archives, because if that [letter of Johnson's had been]
buried in deep storage at Bekins, where the papers were before, no
one would even have known where it was or if we had it. All of
those papers before were completely inaccessible. If you said to
the Sierra Club, "I want to do some research on your papers," they'd
say, "Well, look, they're all in storage. We can't get it out just
for you. We have no idea what boxes it's in, anyway. 123 cartons
of unsorted materials? Oh, boy!"
272
Kuhn: As I say, this is done for us without cost by Bancroft, which has
its own problems, because when the state cut its budget, Bancroft
opted to keep on buying books and to shorten their hours open to the
public. But they're doing the best they can, and I think in a year
or two we'll have this catalogue. Of course, it will have to be up
dated periodically, but it will have a tremendous amount, probably
more than any other place in the United States.
As I say, because our papers are there, a lot of prominent con
servationists also put their own personal papers in Bancroft. So
when you go over there to research the Sierra Club, you can also
look at the personal files of maybe fifteen of the past presidents
and so on, and this is — not just dealing with the Sierra Club
activities, but with all of our activities.
Dorfman: There are additional advantages.
Kuhn: Of course, none of this was anticipated when we started the committee
because I had no idea where we were going. I didn't know how to do
it. I learned that in the Sierra Club you just do it, and if you do
it honestly, the best you can, everybody is going to applaud your
efforts because there is no manual or textbook for chairmen, partic
ularly for the history committee. It never had a history committee.
Dorfman: The committee as it stands today has certainly been substantially
expanded.
Kuhn: Absolutely, absolutely. And anything that comes to the club with
any kind of an historical context, they refer to us.
[end tape 14, side A; end of insert]
273
XIII FURTHER EXPERIENCES OF A RELIGIOUS SCHOOL EDUCATOR
[Interview 7: November 29, 1977]
[begin tape 10, side B]
Dorfman: Before we continue further, I'd like to go back to clarify and
perhaps expand on some of the areas we've previously discussed.
Did you ever go to the Top of the Mark?
Kuhn: Well, I took a confirmation class one Sunday morning in the early
'50s to the Mark Hopkins Hotel. We went on a Sunday morning because
there was a meeting, I think, of the regional group of the American
Jewish Committee, and I said, "I want you kids to see how an adult
Jewish group operates. First of all, you're going to notice they
start late. For all intents and purposes, what they talk about is
really not all that fantastic unless they have a real great speaker."
It really wasn't very illuminating and maybe that was a good
thing. But, anyway, as we got ready to leave and go back to the
Temple, the kids wouldn't leave the lobby of the hotel. This was
so unusual that I said, "Look, we've got to get going. I've got
to get you back so your parents can pick you up." One student
said, "Mr. Kuhn, all our lives we've heard our parents say that
they went to the Top of the Mark. Can we go?" I said, "Sure.
It's a Sunday morning. The place looks horrible, but let's go."
We went up to the Top of the Mark, we got out of the elevator
and looked around, and they shook their heads and got back in and
went down. They were perfectly satisfied. But their parents had
talked about it and they wanted to see it.
Dorfman: Did you ever go to the Top of the Mark as a young man?
Kuhn: I think when I came out of midshipmen's school I must have gone up
there. It was a very, very glamorous place. I had been in the
Skyroom of the Empire Hotel before the war, but that had been taken
over by the federal government as office space. I never went back
and, of course, there was no Crown Room in the Fairmont. You had
274
Kuhn:
Dor f man:
Kuhn:
Dor f man:
Kuhn:
Dorfman:
Kuhn:
no room on the top of the Hotel Sir Francis Drake, so the Mark
Hopkins — that was it. It was very, very glamorous and known all
over the world. [Tape interruption for telephone call]
About adults' perceptions — I had a friend in Oakland named
Charles Kushins, a very well known shoe merchant. In the days
before air travel, he would go to New York on a buying trip four
times a year. [Tape interruption for telephone call] The whole
family would go down to the 16th Street Southern Pacific Station
in Oakland to see Grandpa off to New York.
So one week before Grandpa was going to leave on Sunday, I was
speaking with one of his teenage grandsons. I said, "I guess it's
a thrill for you to go down and see Grandpa off Sunday night," and
he said, "Damn it, it certainly is not. My whole life I've spent
going down to see my grandpa off. J_ want to go to New York.1 Let
them go down and see me off!" Well, I'd never thought about that.
So that's the perception that adults don't have of kids, but you
have to think about it.
What year was that?
That was during the war, World War II.
Do you have any further comments on how the Temple Emanu-El Religious
School was operated when you were a student?
Well, it wasn't very uplifting and maybe that's in the nature of it.
I think there were good teachers, but the concept of teaching was so
parallel to what the techniques were in public school that it wasn't
that much different. I think that was my main objection, the fact
that there was no deviation from the routine. Every Sunday you had
an assembly and you had to read so many pages in the book and have
a test and have reports. There was nothing that really gave any life
to it, unless you happened to be in drama or the choir or something
like that. Now, I played basketball. Maybe that was it. That was
muscular Judaism.
You referred to a Scroll, a 1972 Scroll.
that?
Could you tell me about
Yes. I had taught at Emanu-El before these eighteen years at Beth El.
When I came back to Emanu-El after that time, my first comfirmation
class included my daughter. I wanted it to be something special,
and so I conceived of this method.
You have to realize that of the two hours each week, the rabbi
had the first hour, so I had just an hour, in addition to which,
the class was divided; one semester I had half the class, and the
other semester I had the other half of the class. So I really
275
Kuhn: didn't have the children as long as I would have liked. Normally,
if I had the two hours by myself for a group of students for the
whole year, I would have had four times the amount of time with
them.
One week we would discuss what we were going to do the next
week, a special program. Then the next week we'd have that special
program, and the following week we'd discuss and analyze what that
program was and then discuss what the next week's program would be.
Now, for the special programs we would generally go to the home of
a student who lived near by and whose mother would serve refresh
ments. We'd sit around on cushions — very informal.
I had, for example, Dr. Edward Falces , who had been a plastic
surgeon on the S.S. Hope. Then he would go to Vietnam and teach the
Vietnamese surgeons how to be plastic surgeons. At that time, he
was giving about four months a year to society, freely. I wanted
the kids to see a man who was truly representative of the best in
America.
Then, another time, we met with a fellow named Percy Pinkney,
who was a black. (I think he's in Governor Brown's cabinet now.)
He ran a community street work project on 3rd Street in San Francisco,
He told the kids about the real personal problems that these black
kids have, teenagers their own age. Our children would never even
perceive them, coming from a different socio-economic stratum.
Then one time I had my friend Fred Graebe, who was a great non-
Jewish hero to Jewish people, who saved several hundred Jews in
World War II. We had people of this quality and caliber, and I told
the kids, "You're going to have to figure out what every speaker has
that deals with Judaism, because this is what it's about. You're
going to have to make this linkage yourself. That's your assignment.
What does all this have to do with Judaism?"
It was written up in the '72 Scroll, exactly what the content of
the course was, and I was very proud of it. We went out to the Home
for the Aged and spent a whole day there putting on a Hanukkah
program, touring the place, and visiting individually with the
residents, and really getting involved, much more so than just a
pro forma tour. It was a beautiful thing the way the kids responded
and the old people responded to the kids. They were, in effect,
their grandchildren for that day.
I kept my daughter both semesters. That was the deal I made with
the rabbi, but she was the only one. Everybody else had only half
the year with me, but she had the whole year's experience, and it
was very, very meaningful.
Dorfman: I'm sure it was very rewarding.
276
Kuhn: It was. Now, at one time when I was at Beth El, we had one of the
top Jewish educators in the reform movement come down, and he told
us that in his view the best teaching would be having a class of no
more than ten and using the Socratic method of posing questions. I
took a negative viewpoint, because I said, "There's no way we could
afford that. The teacher would only have ten kids, while we have
twenty or thirty maybe."
But in thinking it over, over the years, I must admit that at
least in theory he was right, because Judaism — its study, that is —
consists of questions and questions and thinking up more questions
in an attempt to answer, at least partially, some of this. You're
never going to run out of these questions, and the point is that
these questions are the ones that bother not only kids, but also
their parents and other adults. They are questions that really
have no long-range answer.
You don't answer them in perpetuity. Two and two is four; you
know that. But questions about philosophy and Judaism and human
relationships — they have changing answers, and your convictions
change, and you have ambivalences. Judaism is a great religion of
ambivalences, and some days you think that being Jewish is the
greatest thing that ever happened to you. Two weeks later, you've
had it with the Jewish people and you're discouraged. Then all of
a sudden Anwar Sadat comes to Jerusalem and you're encouraged.
So I try not to get too much one way or the other, because I
remember my uncle writing me from Jerusalem in 1947 or '48 and
thereafter, "No war, no peace." If he didn't get excited, why
should I?
277
XIV COMMUNITY VOLUNTEER SERVICE
Bay Area Crusade
Dorfman: I wanted to ask you about your volunteer service, first about your
involvement in the United Bay Area Crusade.
Kuhn: Well, that started at a very early age. When I was in grammar school
at Sutro Elementary, we devoted one whole issue of the Sutro News to
the Community Chest drive. I think it had a poem in there. In fact,
I still have a copy of that issue and I loaned it to the Crusade when
they observed their fiftieth anniversary a few years ago and they
photocopied the whole thing. This is something that they don't do in
the public schools in San Francisco County any more. It's a great
loss.
Then I became active again, I guess, when I started working after
the war and my firm made me a loaned executive. I was with Blue
Shield then. Then I began advancing in the Crusade, finally becoming
chairman of all the medium-sized firms in San Francisco. There were
about 1,100 of them and I had about 110 volunteers under me. Then,
for years, I was on the speakers' bureau and was chairman of it
several times. I really did a tremendous amount of work for the
Crusade. I won a number of awards, just because I really believed
in them and I worked very, very hard.
Then I found out that the organization was very difficult to deal
with if you had any innovative ideas to present. They'd just listen
to you and then they figured, "This guy eventually will go away." I
did go away because I figured that if my ideas weren't good, at least
they were worthy of being studied and maybe being tried. If four
counties could have an involvement of school children, I couldn't
figure out why San Francisco wouldn't have that, particularly when
the board of education had authorized it. But the Crusade had
stopped pursuing it.
278
Kuhn: So I resented my child in public school knowing only the March of
Dimes and the American Red Cross as far as charitable drives were
concerned. There was nothing that gave them any education as to
what the United Bay Area Crusade was, a major charity. They used to
come out of school knowing nothing about it, and the Crusade defended
itself by saying, "Well, a project like that wouldn't raise any money.
I said, "That's not the point. I'm thinking of the future." That
was one of the main reasons that I became inactive.
Dorfman: When did you become inactive?
Kuhn: Oh, I would say maybe ten years ago.
Dorfman: What were your duties as chairman of the speakers' bureau.
Kuhn: Basically the duties of the chairman are to take most of the assign
ments, particularly the less desirable ones early on a Saturday
morning or late some night at an inconvenient place. I spoke far
more often than anyone else. It wasn't a question of your training
anybody, because they had a professional staff that did that, but
at the organization meeting of the speakers' bureau I would give
them a typical talk and, as a matter of fact, my best results came
when I quoted the eight degrees of charity as outlined by Maimonides.
That went over fantastically.
I enjoyed speaking for the Crusade because I really believed in
it. But they took you pretty much for granted. They liked to really
work you hard, which was all right, but I had so many other volunteer
activities that I figured it would take me years to crack this thing.
But it was working for four other counties, and the people in San
Francisco just wouldn't extend themselves to try it here.
As a matter of fact, a Crusade staff member had put out a social
science unit for high schools and none of the other professional
staff members of the Crusade were even aware of it. Pretty weird.
Dorfman: It certainly was. What year was this?
Kuhn: This was about twenty years ago.
Dorfman: You also acted as San Francisco's chairman of the commerce and
industry division.
Kuhn: Well, that was this group of about 1,100 business firms, and the
Crusade would recruit people who would take a block. Your job was
to inspire these people, work with them, keep after them through a
pyramidal structure, so that they finished their job. This was
working with people whom you had never seen before and whose knowl
edge of the Crusade you didn't know. Some of them were just assigned
by their firms.
279
Kuhn: There was a tremendous amount of contact work because you had no
idea how much the Crusade professional really was going to do. I
took the assumption that it wasn't going to do much and I had better
do it.
Young Audiences
Dorfman: You were also active in the Young Audiences of San Francisco as
vice-chairman.
Kuhn: Yes. Well, this was one of these activities I had no business
belonging to. First of all, I know very little about music other
than that I like it. Some friends were on the board and they
invited me to join them. At the first meeting I went to, they
were borrowing money and going in the hole, a huge deficit. I
thought, "What am I doing here?"
So I did only two things. We got out of the hole, and we
sponsored Young Audiences Week as a means of calling the attention
of the public to what we were trying to do, which was basically to
give musical education to small groups, instrumental and vocal, to
school children — public, private, and parochial. That's the whole
purpose of the organization. Most of the groups were made up of
people from the symphony.
It's a great organization; it's a national organization. I was
handicapped by the fact that I don't know music. I don't know the
jargon or anything else like that, and I had no personal relation
ships with any of the musicians. But from an organizational stand
point, I had a pretty good idea of what I was doing.
Dorfman: That, then, was your contribution?
Kuhn: Yes. I conceived of the idea of this Young Audiences Week as a
public relations educational thing and it really worked fine.
Dorfman: Were there other Jews in that organization?
Kuhn: There were two types. There were other Jews who were known to be
Jews, and there were several Jews who had long since passed out of
the fold. That bothered me for a while, but I got over it.
Dorfman: Can you tell me who they were?
Kuhn: The other Jewish people?
Dorfman: Yes, in each group.
280
Kuhn: Well, I'd rather not, really.
Dorfman: How about other Jevs, those who elected to identify as Jews?
Kuhn: Well, you find this in various organizations of the general community
nature. Sometimes the civic activity is their means of expressing
their Judaism, even if they don't realize it. They have some kind
of a civic consciousness. I always like a person who has a balance
between Jewish and general. I also don't like to see someone who
will work only in a Jewish organization. There are some people who
take a hard line, and that's all they're going to do, and let the
goyem look out for themselves. I don't believe that.
I think that you have to take a leadership role. You have a
responsibility to the community. If you put it on the basis of
what's good for your child, it's good for your child to have a
good general community whose members know a lot of the input is
Jewish.
Dorfman: Do you think that many Jews in San Francisco share your feelings?
Kuhn: Oh, yes, yes. I think that almost every civic organization has a
great input of Jewish manpower and womanpower. I don't care what
it is — health organizations, cultural — absolutely, absolutely. What
it meant, however, was that all these organizations have a certain
kind of a social atmosphere, and when it came to socializing I was
limited. I wouldn't socialize with anybody who was Jewish but didn't
act that way.
San Francisco Camp Fire Girls
Dorfman: That's understandable. Can you tell me about your work with the
San Francisco Camp Fire Girls?
Kuhn: Ah, yes. I was asked to go on their board in 1955 [until I960].
My wife had been a Camp Fire Girl when she was a girl, and when
our oldest one became of Bluebird age, my wife was a leader of
her group, and also when both girls grew up to Camp Fire. From
the second year on, I was on the camping committee. I was on the
board for six years in total. The last four of those six years,
I was the chairman of the camping committee and I put in a tremen
dous amount of time. We had a marvelous camp in the High Sierra,
in the Sierra Buttes Recreation Area in the Tahoe National Forest.
That's in Sierra County on a Forest Service lease.
When I first visited it, I was disturbed because the swimming
was about two or three miles from camp. The girls would be taken
over there several times a week by a bus, and the bus didn't run
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281
Kuhn:
Dor f man:
Kuhn:
every day. When I had gone to camp, swimming was the thing, at
least twice a day, maybe three times a day. So I conceived the
idea that maybe we could build a pool.
I got the board of directors to approve my motion that — at our
annual mint candy sale, we normally would use the proceeds to sup
plant what we got from the United Crusade campaign. But I said,
"Let's take $5,000 each year and put that aside especially for a
pool fund and let the girls know this. Maybe they'll sell more
mints, hoping that they or at least their younger sisters will have
a pool."
We got several philanthropists, including Walter Haas, who
contributed from the Lucy Stern Fund; once he found out the girls
were raising money, he felt, "Well, we'll match it." It didn't
take long to raise the money and have the pool designed and built.
It's an absolutely magnificent pool and I think it opened in 1958,
which really didn't take that long. For that I received the highest
award in Camp Fire, the Luther Gulick Award.
I had a lot of other fun there because we would have the fiftieth
anniversary celebration at the armory, and I would be the narrator
for that, and then we'd have the candy sale rallies, and I'd be the
emcee. I really put my heart into it because these little girls
were absolutely beautiful.
Now, the Bluebird is seven or eight years old, and there's a
thing called the Bluebird wish, which is a seven-part creed, and
one of the parts is the most sophisticated of any youth or adult
movement in America. This little girl pipes in her little high
voice, "I will try to keep my temper most of the time." Now, I
submit to you, that is sophistication. [Laughter]
You should have been very proud of your contribution.
I was, I was. And my wife was very much involved, and my oldest
daughter was involved, and she went to camp four times. It was
then that they started for the first time allowing the Bluebirds
to go to summer camp. Before that you had to be a Camp Fire Girl.
So she went four years and I'd visit the camp while she was up there.
One thing happened. Each time I would go up there, I would take
a Sierra Club film and show it to the girls and I'd talk about it.
Years later, I received a letter from a girl, a woman in Alaska,
saying, "Dear Mr. Kuhn, You won't remember me, but I was a Camp
Fire Girl at Caniya, and you used to show Sierra Club films. I
became so imbued with their beauty that I decided to become a
teacher, and I am now teaching high school science here in Alaska,
and I wonder if you'd be good enough to sponsor my application for
membership in the Sierra Club."
282
Kuhn:
I wrote back, "You bet I would." Isn't that a beautiful thing?
How often do you get those? You have no idea what you're creating.
That's the fun.
Boy Scouts of America
Dorfman: You also made contributions to the San Francisco Area Council of
Boy Scouts of America.
Kuhn: Yes. My brother had been a Boy Scout, and he started taking me
around when I was about ten, and by the time I was eleven I'd
reached that plateau. You had to be twelve at that time to go
into the Boy Scouts. Between eleven and twelve, my father died
and I never went into the Boy Scouts. But I had all these friends
who were scouts, and eventually I became a merit badge counselor.
Then I became an honorary member of a troop and an assistant scout
master. Then when I became a cub master and started the cub pack
at Emanu-El, that was also part of it. And I was on the troop
committee. I put a lot of time in scouting.
Diabetic Youth Foundation
Dorfman: You were also, I understand, a member of the board of directors and
a member of the advisory board at the Diabetic Youth Foundation.
Kuhn: Yes. Our pediatrician, Dr. Mary B. Olney, started this camp in
1938, so it's now just finished its fortieth season. She asked me
shortly after our oldest child was born if I would join their group,
which I did. I was on their board of directors for ten or fifteen
years, I guess, and I've been on the advisory board ever since.
This is a unique camp because diabetic children cannot go to a camp
with normal children.
There are just too many dietary problems, and the average
counselor at a regular camp would have no way of coping with the
insulin reactions or insulin shots, whereas her counselors were
all trained very assiduously in how to handle these emergencies.
They get campers from all over the country and from foreign
countries. It's just been a beautiful camp. It's now up in the
Sequoia National Forest a mile from Kings Canyon National Park
and it serves several hundred children every year.
283
Kuhn: It's really a marvelous thing. These children are taught the
discipline of being a diabetic. They learn how to compute their
own food intake, give themselves their insulin shots, and test
their own urine. The big thing, of course, is that when they're
a little older they get to go on a week-long pack trip — of course,
a doctor is with them the whole time — and they become very self-
sufficient.
They've gone to camp and many of them had been under the impres
sion that they were the only diabetic child in the world. They had
never seen another one. So the fact that they could make friends
with children with the same problem and meet them again and again,
year after year, at camp and at the Christmas reunions, is a wonder
ful thing.
Dorfman: I imagine it creates a great deal of independence.
Kuhn: It does, it does.
John Muir Nature Trail
Dorfman: You had a role in naming a nature trail in honor of John Muir.
Can you tell me something about that?
Kuhn: In 1967, it was the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Sierra Club,
and the club was having internal problems, and it had not announced
any plans for observing the anniversary. So I was wandering through
Golden Gate Park thinking about this and thinking that there was
really nothing in San Francisco that commemorated Muir when the
Sierra Club was founded. Sure, there was a John Muir School. My
wife had gone to it, and a school is a lovely thing, but it's really
not a natural thing.
I entered the Arboretum and I picked up a map. On the map it
showed "the most westerly twenty acres, site of proposed future
nature trail." So I thought, "Why don't they call this the John
Muir Nature Trail?" I wrote my suggestion to the Recreation
Department and I got a response the next day: "Great idea. Take
it up with the Arboretum people."
Well, I didn't know anything about them, but I took it up and
began meeting with them. At first they explained that this was
the idea of Jock Brydon, who was then the director of the Arboretum.
He conceived it in 196 A, but nothing had happened. I asked, "How
much would it cost?" He said, "Well, about $6,000." I went to
Walter Haas; he'd been a past president of the Recreation and Park
Commission and he gave me the money immediately.
284
Kuhn: Then when we finally began figuring out really what it would cost
to make a trail like this, which would be a simulation walk through
eleven plant communities in California, it wasn't $6,000. It was
$135,000!
So I helped them raise the money and got $40,000 from the San
Francisco Foundation, from the Nepert family fund. One of the
Nepert sisters had been a music teacher at Lowell. Then we found
out that there was a bequest to the city for the parks, which had
never really been tapped before because the restriction had to be
that it was for the "adornment" of Golden Gate Park.
Various administrations had wanted to use it for repairing the
sewers or something like that and the city attorney wouldn't allow
them. But this time he said, "Building a nature trail is really
adornment."
[end tape 10, side B; begin tape 11, side A]
Kuhn: So, with the money at hand, we had a ceremony of ground-breaking
in 1970 where the nature trail was going to be. We had the president
of the Sierra Club, Phil Berry, and we had four of Muir's grand
children, and we had the children from the John Muir School here.
Muir's grandchildren symbolically broke the ground for the trail.
Margot Patterson Doss was there and she subsequently wrote an
article about the walk around the trail the following week. It was
a very, very thrilling thing. Supervisor von Beroldingen was there,
and I explained that she would be very pleased to know that this was
all being done without any tax money whatsoever.
But implementing it was a little difficult [chuckles] because it
took us a year to design the plans in detail. Then every time there
was a shortage of gardeners in the Arboretum, they would take the
remaining gardeners and put them to work, of course, on the already
developed parts of the Arboretum, and then the weeds would come back.
What we did was to spend most of the money to relocate the contours
of the land and put up the fence and the water course and the pond
and a convenience station and things like this, and then we started
this planting.
Well, there was frustration, and I found out that dealing with
the city bureaucracy can be pretty, pretty devastating. There was
a pond — a freshwater marsh, it was called. Now, a pond is supposed
to be waterproof, but when we filled this up, four hours later it
was bone dry. The contractor hadn't put the lining in properly.
The city paid for it and left us with this big worthless thing.
So, subsequently, after several years, the city replaced it, and
then we changed the whole concept of it, realizing that eleven
plant communities can't be done together without a tremendous amount
of gardening time, just to keep out weeds blowing and seed spores.
285
Kuhn: So we're changing the whole concept and making it in miniature
and replication of the coastal strand between Point Arena and Point
Lobos because that's really what that area is. We're changing it
around now and it will take a few more years to develop it.
The Strybing Arboretum Society
Kuhn: In the meantime, they asked me to go on the board of the Arboretum
Society and that has been a lot of fun. Again, just as with the
Young Audiences — my not being musical — I'm not plant-oriented either.
So they used me primarily in financial matters. I found out at my
first board meeting that they had no budget, had never had a budget.
I said, "You mean you haven't had one 'til now." So I've been
treasurer for about the last six or seven years.
When we have our annual plant sale, which is our major fund-
raising event, they put me up in the front with the people who wait,
just to jolly them up while they're in line. As I mentioned before,
one lady asked me, "Do they have beech trees for sale?" I said,
"Lady, I'm the treasurer and all I know about trees is that money
doesn't grow on them." [Laughter]
But we have a very fine group of people and the Arboretum is
actually an educational institution. It's a botanical resource
and our main emphasis is on programs we develop for children. With
the help of the Zellerbach family fund, we have a program where
teachers bring their elementary classes to the Arboretum twelve
times in a given year. They're prepared in advance for each visit
by material which we prepare and when they come they'll spend half
a day. Each time they leave, they take home a little potted plant,
so that at the end of the year they have twelve plants. One of them
is the redwood.
Now, what they do? Well, there are a number of trails in the
Arboretum, seventy acres in the Arboretum. We have one trail that's
on coniferous plants, another on redwoods, another on pollination,
plants the Indians used, and poisonous plants. Then there's the
nature trail. Then the timber industry wants to put in a trail
of wood used in construction. So there are really some great walks
in there, including the California natives, and it's a beautiful,
beautiful place.
We have courses for women who want to be docents and they get
academic credit for this. We also have students from Davis and
from City College who are studying horticulture, who do their
in-service training there, and all in all it's a really great
educational institution.
286
Kuhn: We also operate the only botanical library, the Allen Crocker
Russell Library, which is open six days a week and has a huge
collection of books on plants, and it's really been a great source
of satisfaction to be involved with that, particularly the children's
angle. Plants attract a whole different segment of the population.
Plants are quiet, they're nonviolent, and there are people who are
attracted to that, even to the point of talking to their plants.
The California Historical Society
Dorfman: Can you tell me about your contribution to the California Historical
Society with regard to Robert Louis Stevenson?
Kuhn: Yes. I happen to be a great admirer of Robert Louis Stevenson, not
only of his works, but I'm absolutely intrigued by the type of life
he lived. I discovered that between 1879 and 1880 he lived at 1608
Bush Street in San Francisco, which is right above the Stockton
Street Tunnel. I got the idea that maybe there should be an histori
cal marker there. So I approached the California Historical Society
and they agreed to sponsor this.
We got the permission okayed from the owner of the building and
we had a big ceremony with Supervisor Pelosi representing the mayor.
We had bagpipers and we all marched down from there to a restaurant
on the next block and had a nice dinner at which Norman Strauss,
who's one of the great Stevensonians and who developed the Stevenson
Museum at St. Helena, spoke, as did Dr. James Hart, the director of
Bancroft Library at Berkeley, another great Stevensonian and the
editor of the book From Scotland to Silverado.
I spoke on the coincidence that in 1879 to 1880 three great
Scotsmen were in this area: Stevenson at 1608 Bush, John Muir at
1419 Taylor Street, and John McLaren, who developed Golden Gate
Park, down in San Mateo County. These men were born in Scotland
within thirty-five miles of each other, and we know that McLaren
and Muir knew each other, because I have a photograph, given to
me by Muir's granddaughter, of McLaren and Muir in Golden Gate
Park in 1910.
I've tried to find out if Stevenson and Muir ever met each other
because they had one great friend in common, an author named Charles
Warren Stoddard, who had come back from the South Seas. All his
South Seas stories so intrigued Stevenson that when he became
famous as an author in the 1880s, he came back in 1888 and set sail
for the South Seas, never to return, and this man was a friend of
Muir's.
287
Kuhn: You might think, "Well, knowing that both of them were Scotch,
maybe he brought them together," but I have found no reference and
I have done a lot of research and I am still trying to do it.
Other Jews in Community Volunteer Services
Dorfman: That's very interesting. I'm also interested in other Jewish members
of the organizations we have just discussed, such as those within the
United Bay Area Crusade.
Kuhn: Well, the Crusade would have a lot of Jewish members because they
not only have a big fund-raising apparatus, but they have a big
social planning apparatus wherein every agency is examined year to
year. You've had people like Frank Sloss and Joe Blumlein who have
been president of the Crusade. Morty Fleishhacker, Peter Haas.
You have a woman like Adele Corvin who's been very high up in the
social planning process; Marilyn Borovoy — because they all are asso
ciated with agencies, Crusade agencies, and they really believe in
this, in this whole community approach. They're not competing for
funds with each other; they're doing what's best for the community.
In the Crusade, I think it's really been — well, first of all,
when it started as the Community Chest, this was a direct duplica
tion of what we'd worked out in 1910 as the Federation of Jewish
Charities, so it's a Jewish-inspired idea.
Dorfman: How many of those people that you named did you relate with?
Kuhn: All of the ones I've mentioned.
•
Dorfman: And within the Young Audiences?
Kuhn: The Young Audiences had, as I say, a few non-Jewish Jewish members,
but all musical organizations have Jewish members because Jews love
music. If you look at the national board of Young Audiences, with
Isaac Stern and people of that caliber — it's been so long since I've
been active with them, it's hard to remember just who was really on
the board who was Jewish specifically. It's just sort of a hazy
thing with me now. But there were Jewish people there.
Dorfman: We can come back to that.
Kuhn : Right .
Dorfman: With the Camp Fire Girls?
288
Kuhn: Lots of Jews, again because they wanted this for their children and
for others' children. As a matter of fact, in one year in the '50s,
the presidents of the San Francisco Council of Boy Scouts, Girl
Scouts, and Camp Fire Girls were not only all Jewish, but they were
all members of Temple Emanu-El.
Dorfman: What year was that?
Kuhn: I think it was in the '50s. Walter Heller was president of the Boy
Scouts, Mrs. Daniel Stone was president of the Girl Scouts, and Mrs.
Samuel Jacobs was president of the Camp Fire Girls.
Dorfman: That's remarkable.
Kuhn: It was remarkable. I had a lot of fun in the Camp Fire Girls. I
first learned there the role a man might play in an otherwise
entirely women's organization. I thought, "I better find something
that I can do where I'm not going to get involved in this political
byplay between the women," because at that time Camp Fire had a
tremendous number of changes of its executive leadership, the paid
professional staff.
Every time they began to change the top personnel, the leaders
would begin to feel their oats and pretty soon they just weren't
content with leading their own groups; they wanted to run the
organization. They had this battle between them. So you had to
have a strong board to say, "Look, you ladies do your thing, and
we'll do our thing."
Of course, you had different types of leadership in the organiza
tion — in fact, in every organization. Every president is different
from every other president. One time we had a president, Mrs.
Terwilliger, who was just a marvelous lady, but she really didn't
have all that much knowledge of parliamentary procedure.
During the early part of one meeting, I made a motion on which
she said, "Let's vote." I said, "It has to be seconded." The next
time I made another motion and it was seconded, she rose and said,
"Wait a minute, we have to vote on it." The third time I said some
thing, I looked at the head of the table and there was no president
up at the head of the table. She was out in the kitchen making
coffee for the board! [Laughter]
So I had a lot of fun with these organizations, but, as I say,
a man has to find out what his role is. They had wanted me to
actually be president of the Camp Fire Girls, but I was so involved
with other things I just couldn't do it. I would have liked to have
done it.
289
Dorfman: Were there other Jews whom you knew and related with on the Diabetic
Youth Center?
Kuhn: Oh, yes, because again diabetes is a very ethnically related disease.
It's a "Jewish disease," whether it's because of the tendency of some
elements in the Jewish population to be obese, or for whatever reason.
Peggy and Bill Kaplan are among our closest friends. Ben Breit. Ruth
Snow is the current president. A number of others. Some had diabetic
children; some did not.
Then there was a group in the East Bay, led by Morris Abouaf , whose
daughter was diabetic. He supported the camps tremendously and after
he died we thought that maybe the East Bay support would cease. But
every year since his death (and that's fifteen years ago) they send
us $20,000 or $25,000 that they've raised in some kind of a park fair
or other effort, in his memory. They've been a great bulwark of
strength, the East Bay Foundation for Diabetic Children, our first
auxiliary. It's just a group of maybe twenty or twenty-five Jewish
couples in Oakland who did this; self-perpetuating, they run it
themselves .
Dr. Mary Olney started the camp and has directed it for forty
consecutive seasons. It's a personal commitment to her ideals and
dedication.
Dorfman: Could you tell me whether there were and are other Jews on the
Strybing Arboretum Foundation?
Kuhn: Yes. We've had as one of our past presidents Jane Coney, who was
the granddaughter of Jenny Zellerbach. Mrs. Lawrence Stein is on
our advisory board. There are a number of others whose names un
fortunately fail me right now.
Dorfman: Well, we can come back to that. I'd like to know about your partic
ipation in another organization, the California Historical Society.
Kuhn: I was really only on the periphery there. As a matter of fact, I
resigned from them because of their insensitivity to Jewish affairs.
They scheduled an event that conflicted with the Jewish New Year.
I wrote them about it and said, "You ought to have a better method
of clearing your calendar." The next year their event conflicted
with Yom Kippur and I wrote them again. The third year it conflicted
with Passover and I just quit.
I figured, "There's no way I can make these people see this
thing." It's not a question only of the fact that some Jews who
were members of the organization might want to attend the event and
couldn't do it, but the fact that they should avoid conflicting with
any religious holiday, not just Jewish.
290
Kuhn: It wasn't, I think, because of any anti-Semitic attitude on their
part. I think that they were just disorganized. They really weren't
thinking in that direction. There are many good things they do.
Their publication program is excellent, but that was too much for me.
I couldn't fight that. I thought that maybe someone would call me
and say, "How come you quit?" But no one ever did.
The San Francisco General Hospital Auxiliary
Dorfman: That was unfortunate for them. You were also on the board of
directors of an auxiliary to the General Hospital where there was
a recreation room built for tubercular patients. What was your
role in building that room?
Kuhn: Well, the president of the auxiliary to the — it started out known
as the auxiliary to the City and County Hospital; now it's known
as San Francisco General Hospital. But it's a municipal institution.
The president was Caroline Charles, a very famous lady in volunteer
work in San Francisco. She had been president of the board of KQED,
a trustee of Stanford — just a remarkable woman. She had headed a
fund-raising committee for building this pool for Camp Fire and we
worked together.
She's the only woman I know that when she was a young married
woman, her husband wanted to do something for her, and instead of
saying, "I want a boat or a car," she said, "Hire me a secretary."
That enabled her to do a lot more volunteer work than anybody else
I know and she was a cracker jack at it.
So she asked me to go on this board. My main function was to
shnorr money or materials for the patients. Almost every patient
was an indigent. Many of them did not speak English, and the city,
because of budgetary problems and its attitude, treated such things
as toothpaste and toothbrushes as luxury items. That was something
the patient was not entitled to. So we had to go out and get this
stuff.
I put together several things involving several organizations.
I would get the Lions Club, of which I was a member, to pay for
materials which the Camp Fire Girls would convert into table favors
for the Christmas trays of the patients.
[Chuckles] I got the Lions Club to pay for materials with which
the students of the California School of Fine Arts made mobiles to
hang over the beds of the child tubercular patients, except that
they forgot the principles of physics and these were so huge that
they didn't just spin in the wind; you had to hit them. Luckily,
291
Kuhn: of course, with the introduction of drugs, the number of children
who were there for any period of time for that condition has been
much fewer.
They had a lot of adult tuberculars and really no recreation
room. So I raised the money and did a lot of work in creating this
room for the benefit of these types of patients. Then I also would
go around shnorring clothing. A man might go in the hospital very,
very thin and after three or four months he'd be fattened up so his
clothes wouldn't fit him. So I used to get my fellow Lions to
contribute their suits. We'd get them cleaned and we had a clothing
exchange out there.
The woman who was then the executive director, Mrs. Horace
Clifton, had worked with my wife Caroline in the juvenile court.
She was a marvel and just had a great heart, and I would do almost
anything for her because I really — I thought, "All I'm doing is
raising money." We had volunteers, some of whom were employed by
the hospital, who would come back on their days off to feed patients,
hold their hands, mop their brows while they were dying. Now, that
is service. I never did anything like that. So it was a straight
organization.
We tried to put a little heart into it. We felt that just be
cause it's a city institution is no reason why it shouldn't have a
heart. Just as Mt. Zion or St. Luke's has an auxiliary, why shouldn't
City and County [Hospital] have an auxiliary? We did a great deal
there. Some of it was tough to do.
I felt, for example, we should have a cardiac defibrillator in
the hospital. This is a device to deliver 800 volts to the chest of
a patient whose cardiac rhythm is so rapid and irregular as to be
ineffectual in the delivery of blood and oxygen to the other tissues,
particularly the brain. This then restores the normal rhythm of
blood flow for the patient.
I got the hospital administration to agree that they would — they
directed the administrator of the hospital to change his budget line
so that they could get one immediately. I went overseas on behalf
of the Federation and when I came back he hadn't done a thing.
There 'd been maybe half a dozen people who would have had a chance
to live if they'd had that equipment. They suspended this super
intendent of the hospital for five days. But the next day, the
auxiliary had bought a defibrillator. The manufacturer in Palo Alto
had it delivered, and then the city bought one.
Of course, you should have one in every emergency hospital. So
we were providing life-saving equipment which was really the city's
responsibility, but we wouldn't quibble about it. We said, "We've
got to have it; we'll do it." That was when I think I first ran
292
Kuhn: afoul of city bureaucracy, which really shouldn't have surprised me
when I got involved at the Arboretum, which was a different kind of
bureaucracy.
All these organizations that work with city departments — I call
them "citizen support groups," and I've had for a long time an idea
of sponsoring a conference of all of them — the Friends of the Library,
the Friends of the Zoo, the Friends of Rec Park. There are about
twenty of them — of getting together all of them to show what they all
do, how big this movement is, how many thousands of people are trying
to make this a better city.
They're frustrated because the better job they do, the more the
city leans on them to provide things that really should be part of
the city budget. There are a lot of things the Friends of the Library
are doing — buying books — which really should be in the book budget
of the public library, but they feel, "Well, we've got these good
schnooks; they won't allow the library to go down." The same is
true of a lot of the organizations.
Dorfman: Is there any move at the hospital to stop such activity — this leaning
for things that really should be a part of the city's responsibility?
Kuhn: Well, we couldn't. As a matter of fact, I went to see the chief
administrative officer in an effort to see if we couldn't get this
hospital superintendent out of there, but politically it was im
possible. He was almost near retirement and we just had to wait
until he finished his career. But it was a grossly inefficient
operation.
It's a tough thing, of course. But, for example, at that time
there wasn't one subscription in that hospital to any magazine in
hospital management. Not one.
You see, we learn a lot of this from the University of California
Medical School, because they are responsible for providing the
medical care there and were in contact with the city. That was part
of the in-service training of the medical students, interns, and
residents. At one time, of course, Stanford shared it with Cal,
but Stanford moved from San Francisco to Palo Alto, and now it's
all run by Cal.
Dorfman: Did you work with other Jews on this auxiliary?
Kuhn: Yes. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Irving Reichert, Sr. was the woman
who started the auxiliary and there were a number of other Jewish
people on the board. Harold Dobbs became president of it after I
had left the board. It was a very fine institution.
293
The American Association of Blood Banks
Dorfman: You were also involved with the American Association of Blood Banks.
Kuhn:
Oh, yes. Yes, I was.
Dorfman: They had a program for you and you received an award. Can you tell
me about that?
Kuhn: Sure. I started out as a blood donor in 1941 and I gave my eighty-
eighth and last pint of blood in Israel in 1974. I not only became
a blood donor, but I also became involved as chairman of the blood
donating activity where I was working, Blue Shield. We became a
very, very excellent blood donor group.
So then I conceived the idea that maybe I could help by organizing
blood donor groups at other firms. Well, I didn't know anybody, and
this required a certain technique that I developed, which I couldn't
get anybody else ever to do with me. No matter how much they liked
blood banking, they just didn't want to go anywhere. They'd say,
"Look, I'm head of this blood donor club at the bank where I work,
and that's enough. That's enough of a headache. I don't want to go
somewhere where I don't know anybody."
But I considered it a big challenge because sometimes it would
take you ten years to crack it. At other times you could do it just
by walking in. But you had a marvelous thing to sell. So eventually
I became active in the California Blood Bank System, which was all
the non-Red Cross voluntary blood banks in California, most of them
sponsored by medical societies but some by community groups, as it
is in San Mateo. I spoke at several of the meetings of the California
Blood Bank System.
Then I became a member of the American Association of Blood Banks,
representing Irwin. In 1967, they asked me to be chairman of the
administrative program committee. I didn't even know what that was.
It was the first time a nonprofessional blood banker was even on the
committee, much less chairman.
The point is that at the annual meeting of the American Associa
tion of Blood Banks there are scientific sections and administrative
sections. This dealt with all of the administrative sections — of
blood donor recruitment, public relations, legal aspects, personnel,
everything of that nature, everything other than the scientific.
Our meeting was in New York. It was a great success. Before
that we had a meeting of our committee in Chicago. For the first
time, we had a planning meeting before the main meeting and it was
a big success. I enjoyed it. I attended a number of the American
294
Kuhn: Association of Blood Banks meetings, not just here, but the one in
Los Angeles and the one in Detroit I spoke to on blood donor recruit
ment. I went to the College of American Pathologists in Dallas and
talked about blood donating and motivation. I think my title there
was "It Doesn't Grow on Trees."
A lot of us think that if you just want a pint of blood for a
patient, just open the refrigerator and there it is. Well, it
isn't that way at all, and I became quite an authority on blood
donor recruitment. This was all while I was a volunteer. Then for
a year and a half I worked for Irwin, during which period I'm proud
to say that the Blood Bank finally eliminated any paid donors — the
first blood bank in the United States to meet all the needs of a
huge metropolitan community without recourse to paid donors. That
means that we really developed a pool of volunteer donors.
My main technique there was speaking wherever I could, as I had
done as a volunteer. I spoke for the Blood Bank over the years
maybe a thousand times, everywhere — showed films, spoke, and had
very good results.
But some of these motivations in why people do not give blood
are just unbelievable. You wouldn't really believe that a man
says — when you ask him a question, "If your child needed blood and
was dying, would you give then?" He says, "I'd have to think about
it first." You wonder, "Where does this person come from?" Partic
ularly if you ask him to do something that doesn't endanger him in
any way. His body replaces the blood in a few hours, even though
you can't give for maybe eight weeks. But some people, the moment
they think of blood and the needle, boy, that's gruesome.
Now, my two daughters — one of them was called by the Blood Bank
last night and she went over, and the other one went with her, and
they both gave. My son has yet to give his first pint and he's
somewhat squeamish about it, even though he's come to a blood bank
and watched me give. He just has not been able to put it together
for himself.
Dorfman: Was it in relation to your most recent achievement with the Blood
Bank — that is, nonpaid donors — that you received the award?
Kuhn: Oh, no, no, no. The award I received from the Blood Bank, the
American Association of Blood Banks, was for having given eighty
pints. That's the ten-gallon award. That had nothing to do with
volunteer work other than as a donor, and that, I tell you, is a
very rare award. That's a lot of blood.
Dorfman: Yes, it certainly is!
295
Kuhn: Now I'll tell you a serious story. In 1974, on my trip to Israel, I
had a few extra minutes, so I went down to the Mogen David Adorn Blood
Bank in Jaffa to give a pint of blood. There was a young volunteer
there named Phillips. We began talking about the fact that during the
Yom Kippur War, American Jews wanted to give blood, but the Israelis
said that they could handle it by themselves, that the Israelis could
give all the blood they needed.
But in Britain, the Jewish civilian population insisted upon
giving the blood, and it came out to Jaffa and sat in a big refrig
erator for a few days, without any need for it, and then the Israelis
put it in a big truck and drove it down to the Sinai and gave it to
the Egyptian Third Army, who were wrapped around by the Israeli forces
and who would die without it. The Israelis felt that these were
human beings too, to their wives, their sons. But they never told
the British Jews about this because they knew the British Jews would
be furious if they felt their blood was being used to save Arab lives.
That's an essential difference between the Jew and the Arab; the
Arabs do not give sufficient blood to save their own lives.
Dorfman: This story was never publicized?
Kuhn: I've never seen it, no. But I've no reason to doubt it.
University of California, Berkeley, Extension Program
Dorfman: What was your involvement with the University of California Exten
sion Program?
Kuhn: I'd try to take a lot of Extension courses, night courses. I always
found it very difficult after a busy day at work; I just couldn't
stay awake. I figured, "Supposing I took the course at noon?" I
checked up and I found out that in London, for example, during the
blitz, they had a whole university going in the middle of London
this way. USC had been doing it for years. So I conceived the idea
of having UC Extension have courses downtown in the business commun
ity — not out at 55 Laguna Street, but down here in the Bank of
America board room, in the Insurance Securities Auditorium, the
Giannini Auditorium in the Bank of America, etc.
First I had to convince UC Extension. It took me years. They
never said it wasn't a good idea. I said, "Look, if you don't think
it's a good idea, say so. Be honest with me." They never would be
honest with me. Finally, I called two meetings. I brought in the
top personnel people of the five biggest employers — Southern Pacific,
Bank of America, the Telephone Company, PG&E, and Standard Oil — and
they said, "We'll support it." So I really pushed UC to the wall.
296
Kuhn: At that time, they tried to get out of it. Instead of giving it
to the Extension, they tried to give it to UC Medical School, saying,
"That's UC San Francisco." Well, a medical school had no interest
in this thing. So finally the Extension was stuck with it, and they
put together a course of six weeks, three professors each talking
twice, and they were just terrific. We had forty-five people who
met every other Wednesday, I think, in the board room of the Bank of
America, and you could buy your lunch, a box lunch.
These people came from all over the city. It was on the general
theme of education. I remember the first speaker. I can't think of
his name right now. He was just utterly unbelievable.
Then they gave another course and that was less well attended,
and the third one was even less, and then they gave it up. But my
contention is that they made no effort. They never sent anybody
over here to call on any of these five corporations or any other
corporation and say, "Look, will you pay the fees for these people?"
If you go to a service club, it takes an hour and a half. If you go
to a business luncheon, it takes an hour and a half. If you go to a
course, it takes an hour and a half.
There are over 100,000 college graduates in downtown San Francisco
and many of them would love to go to a thing like this. All I'm
saying is, "Don't make them go after work to 55 Laguna Street. They
have to bring their car in, get home late. Let them go during the
working day." I think it's valid, and I'll tell you when it's going
to be proven — when City College opens its new educational center
downtown at 4th and Mission, then you'll see it, when they start
giving things like this. State could get involved with it; USF could
bring it downtown.
I wanted to give Cal, my alma mater, the first crack, and I had a
political reason. At that time, Cal was being shut out from all over
the place. Its budget was in real bad shape. And I said, "Here's a
chance. If you're so great, Berkeley, and you've got such a great
faculty, show them to the San Francisco people — what great teachers
you have. Don't just keep them for the kids."
But the Extension Division, of course, receives no money from the
state budget. It has to be self-supporting. But I felt that they
just wouldn't level with me. I felt we proved a point, but that you
have to really — you can't do it all just by sending out notices. I
wanted them to go around and really sell the thing in the business
community. I thought it would really go. I'm positive it would.
It's just a discouraging thing. As a matter of fact, the fellow who
hosted one of the lunches is my friend Bill Coblentz, who's now
chairman of the Board of Regents. I think he was just beginning
his terms as a regent then.
297
Dorfman: During what years were you speaking?
Kuhn: This must be somewhere in the mid-'60s, as I recall. Very discour
aging. I mentioned this to Roger Heyns, the chancellor of Berkeley
at one time, and he said, "I want to hear more about this." But
then he left shortly thereafter.
Dorfman: Do you feel this is likely to come about in the near future?
Kuhn: It will come about. Someone will figure out it's a good idea. If
USC can do it in L.A. , why can't we do it here? The business com
munity is delighted to give you the space. There are all sorts of
buildings and auditoriums and conference rooms, so that's no problem,
and organizationally it's not very difficult to do. But you have to
want to do it.
The National Parks, a 4,000-Mile Adventure, 1938
Dorfman: Before we go on, I'd like to hear about your very first trip out of
state. You mentioned that you took a A, 000-mile trip in the national
parks .
Kuhn: Yes. I had a friend named Merv Silberman. We'd gone to high school
together and played basketball together, and he and I and his younger
brother started this trip, and we were joined by one other fellow
later on. We went from here down through the Central Valley, over
the Tehachapi Pass, over to Las Vegas, and into Bryce and Zion Canyon
in Utah, Salt Lake City.
We went through the Mormon Tabernacle and swam in the Great Salt
Lake; up to Yellowstone; over to Glacier National Park; down to Coeur
d'Alene, Idaho; down to Pasco, Washington, where the Snake and Columbia
Rivers come together; down to Portland; and down the Redwood Highway,
home — 4,500 miles in thirteen days at a cost, including everything,
of a penny a mile; $45.13 I think it cost me, because we slept out
all the time. We never slept indoors.
For example, it was dark when we left Las Vegas. We just parked
by the side of the road. The next morning we woke up, and here we
were above the Virgin River, and a farmer was picking cantaloupes,
which we bought for a nickel a piece, and then we swam in that same
river in Utah. In twenty-four hours we swam in the same river in
three different states.
Dorfman: What year was this?
298
Kuhn: '38. It was just great. I was twenty-one and we saw everything that
there was to see. It was just beautiful. I don't know which is
greater, Zion or Bryce or Yellowstone (which was magnificent), and
then, of course, Glacier was so peaceful and beautiful.
And coining down the Redwood Highway — let me give you an example
of the Redwood Highway. We came into Crescent City late at night,
had dinner. We said, "Where can we camp?" They said, "Well, the
Smith Yuba State Park is just down here a bit." So we drove there,
pitch black, parked the car, got out our sleeping bags.
The next morning we wake up under a gorgeous redwood tree and
there down fifty feet away is the Smith River. So I dive into the
Smith River. I'm swimming and underneath me salmon are going up
stream to spawn.
Now, that Smith River State Park is the site where I helped
friends of mine establish a redwood grove in memory to members of
their family, the Lisberger family grove. Sylvan Lisberger was a
past president of the Federation. It's in memory of him and his
two sons, who were schoolmates of mine and who both predeceased
their father. So the Smith River — it will now be part of the Red
wood National Park.
But just to know — I never — I had heard about this, but I never
dreamt that — every single day was a new kind of an impression.
Just magnificent.
Then I really got the travel bug after that, and the next year
Merv and I went to the New York World's Fair, had a marvelous time.
However, we resented the World's Fair. We said we, had to go to it,
but we found New York City itself far more fascinating.
Dorfman: Than the World's Fair?
Kuhn: Yes.
Dorfman: What a comparison between the two trips.
Kuhn: Oh, yes. One was civilized —
Dorfman: Did you drive to New York City?
Kuhn: No. Well, we took the train to Chicago and to Detroit. We got a
new Ford. We went to Cleveland to see an aunt of his. Then we
crossed New York State and went to Boston to see my uncle, whom I'd
never seen, and came down the Meritt Parkway to New York City on
May 6, 1939, the last time the Atlantic fleet was in the Hudson
prior to World War II. After a week in New York, we went down to
Washington, D.C., saw a cousin of mine, took all the tours of the
White House, and then drove west through Kansas City and Denver and
all of those places. A marvelous time. Three weeks, $150.
299
Dorfman: That's quite a comparison to today's prices.
Kuhn: Well, even the financing. I was then working for the Anglo-California
National Bank. They frowned upon you borrowing from the bank where
you worked, but they would arrange for you to borrow elsewhere. I
borrowed $150 from the Bank of America and the next year I paid them
back $159. Interest was 6 percent. Unbelievable.
Further Episodes as a Volunteer
[Interview 8: December 13, 1977]
[begin tape 12, side B]
Dorfman: Why don't we start this evening with some of the anecdotes that you
wanted to share?
Kuhn: Well, I wanted to give you some names of people, Jewish people, on
the boards of these various community organizations. Over the
years, in the United Bay Area Crusade, which is now the United Way,
for example, I worked with Richard Gump. I worked with Lloyd
Hanford, Jr., Fred Freund, John Blumlein, and his cousin Joe.
In the Diabetic Youth Foundation: Ruth Snow, Ben Breit, Bill
Kaplan, Dr. Moses Grossman, and Morris Abouaf, as well as Janet
Nicklesburg.
In the Camp Fire Girls, on their board, we had Dr. and Mrs.
Louis Goldstein, Mrs. Samuel Jacobs, Mrs. Moses Lasky, Mrs. William
Corvin, Robert Borovoy, and also on the fiftiety anniversary program
I had Marian Otsea.
In Young Audiences, one of the presidents was Mrs. Stephen
Varnhagen. Also on the board was Mrs. Ernest Rogers, and Mrs. —
(I can't read my writing.)
On Camp Fire again, continuing on Camp Fire: Bob Pollack, Mr.
and Mrs. (she's a doctor) Alan Heringhi, Dr. Maurice Hartage, and
Mrs. Nicklesburg was also on that board.
Then in the Strybing Arboretum Society we had Mrs. Stephen Coney,
Mrs. Laurence Stein, Mrs. Richard Swillinger, and Mrs. Jules Heumann.
In Boy Scouting, I worked with Joshua Kurzman, Mrs. Perry Harris,
Mrs. Edward Weiss, Mrs. Paul Klein, Mrs. Bennett Raff in — these were
all my den mothers. Our scout master in Troop 17 was Arthur Myer.
On the troop committee were Dr. David Rytand, Henry Bettman, Walter
Miller, Jr., and Walter Geballe.
300
Kuhn: On the auxiliary to the San Francisco General Hospital — it was
started by Mrs. Irving F. Reichert, and on the board was Mrs. Robert
Levison, Sr.
In the Sierra Club, there was George Marshall, a past president
of the club and also of the Wilderness Society, and the son, inci
dentally, of Louis Marshall, a great American Jewish leader. I
think that covers the board members.
Fund-Raising Experiences
Dorfman: I would be interested in how you related to these people you just
mentioned.
Kuhn: Some of them were good friends of mine before; others became friends
during. I had obviously much more rapport if I thought they were a
good Jew. If they had no Jewish connections other than being just
pro forma Jewish, particularly if they took no part in Jewish
philanthropy, I had a very dim view of them. But, after all, it
was a community organization.
There was another activity I'd like to mention. After my trips
to Europe and Israel and North Africa in 1961 and '62 for the United
Jewish Appeal, I was asked to speak by UJA. I did, for about three
or four years in the western region, all the way from Denver to
Hawaii, and Spokane to San Diego. I have a little bicycle outside
there on the shelf, outside there — a little award: "A man on the go."
I had two very interesting things that happened. I would do two
different things. One, I would go to a community and give a talk
whose primary purpose was fund raising. Then later on I would go
to a community sometimes, at UJ request, and meet with their budget
committee.
One year the Seattle community had a disastrous campaign, and
they cut everybody except the American Jewish Committee and the
Anti-Defamation League, because both of those agencies had national
board members in Seattle. So I thought this was a disgrace, and
UJ asked me if I would go up there. So I said, "Certainly." So
they wired Seattle and they said, "Kuhn is coming," and they got a
wire back saying, "Don't send Kuhn. We're sending $5,000 more."
[Chuckles] I thought that was negative fund raising.
Then I almost had what would have been the greatest experience in
my life. They were going to link me together with Harpo Marx. He
and I were going to go to the Northwest — Portland, Seattle, Vancou
ver. He would play his harp and then I would give a pitch. I
301
Kuhn: thought, "Oh, what an act to follow." Of all the Marx brothers, he
was my favorite. Then he got sick and he died and we didn't go. It
would have been a marvelous, marvelous thing. But, anyway, I even
tually ended up as vice-chairman of the western states region of
UJA, and that was a tremendous amount of satisfaction.
Now, I mentioned these UC Extension courses that I started down
town, and the first one, which was the most successful of the three,
had three different professors, each of whom spoke twice. The first
one was sensational. His name was Michael Scriven, Ph.D., professor
of philosophy and of education and special assistant for program
evaluation to the vice-chancellor of UC Berkeley. I'm going to give
you this [course description] because his name is on here and he has
an article in here, in one of these announcements written some years
after this, on "Common Fallacies in Program Evaluation," which is
just a sensational article. He's worthwhile for anybody to hear.
I have another one here. At Temple Emanu-El during the summer
it was the custom for many years to ask a layman to give a five-
minute meditation during the Friday night service at 5:30 p.m., a
half -hour service, and I would always be asked by Rabbi Fine to do
this once a year. He'd write a letter in which he'd tell me what
it was not supposed to be. It was not supposed to be a miniature
sermon, and about ten other things it wasn't supposed to be. So I
finally figured, "I'm going to give what I want and if it's not
what he wants, he won't ask me back. That's the worst that could
happen. He can't stop me in the middle."
So one year — this was in 1955 — it was April, and I was supposed
to give it at 5:30 on a Friday, and all day long I couldn't figure
out what I wanted to say. At four o'clock it hit me and I sat down
at my typewriter in my office and I banged this out and I gave it.
It was so good (I have to say that) that they printed it in the
Student Scroll; they gave it at Temple Beth El. What it was was a
Sabbath meditation. That was the day that they announced the Salk
vaccine, and I announced it as a biblical story, and people came up
afterwards and said, "That was beautiful. Can you tell me where
that was in the Bible?"
Dorfman: That's wonderful.
Kuhn: Really, it was just — . Now, some of the times my activities would
get a little in conflict with each other. When I was at Blue Shield,
for many years I ran the blood drives for the employees and also the
United Crusade drive. Many times I would go to a department in any
kind of a business and they would say, "Uh-oh, here comes Kuhn.
What is it this time, blood or money?" [Laughter]
301a
SABBATH MEDITATION
KIHI'IK'« Null.: Thi> nmlitalioii «a» \< littt-n Ir* a
lurnifi nifinlirr <>t tin- fariiltx of our Kc]it:i<nis
>. IHHI!. Kn-ju-c it eiiin-eni:. itself uith the \i\tt,
<>t I'liilciicii. «<• liaxr in< -luiled it in our S<Jiou_
" And in iluiM- days llic inhabitants of die
land \\erc fearful anil trembling, for a scourge
lia<) dcM-cnd'-d ujion llii'ni. so that men and
tinmen, and nol least tin- children, were in-
« rcasingly stricken. And there was none in
the land, no matter hou high his station.
tthuw life uas not touched by this plague
which paralxzed and killed or crippled whw-
i-ver it struck.
"\ou one of the leader.- of llie'pcople was
a man named Franklin, liim-rlf a \ielim of
the diM-a>e. And ihe people rallied around
him and ej< h pa\e acc'onlili^ to his portion
>o that wise men and ;-a£:es mi^lit study ho*
to oxercome llie scourge.
"For a half-score of veais the people wailed
and hoped l>ut Mill exer firealer numliers
UITC cul down to v\ilher or In die. And
Kiaiiklin uas called lo hi> father.-.. And an
other hnlf-M'ore vears pass«-ii.
"Anil then (here aro-c in ihe land a man
named Jonas. And he uas surrounded l>v a
legion of others learned in n<il<iral lhin<!.s.
^ i-a. an<l tJiey lilirnc.l the oil in their labora
tories, even unio luiilni^'hl. for many months.
I 01 iliey VM-ir anxious llial the catiw- of this
p«-lili-ii<-e J«- laid liarr.
"And, lo, the work of Jonas and his hel|»ers
was crowned with success. So that ihe people
ooce more felt secure in their homes. And
there was much, rejoicing throughout the
land, and the. hearts of parents were filled
with gladness.
".\ow all this took place in thai season of
the year when the Jews celebrated their an
cient festival of Passover. And even as ihe
Angel of Death had passed over the houses
of ihe Jews when they were slaves in Egypt,
so even now he passed over the homes of all
the inhabitant* of the land. And none was
afraid, and the Festival of Freedom took on
an added meaning in that mankind was now
free of this plague."
Accept, () Lord, our gratitude for this lioou
which has come to America and to tJie world
during the past week. As we observe the Sab-
hath this night in our homes, with the lights
perha|»s a little brighter lhan usual, may we
be mindful of the sacrifices, the ordeals, and
llu- su/Tering experienced by the many re
sponsible for this triumph of medical science.
May we never forget what has gone before
nor ]«• unmindful that ultimate causation is
Thine alone.
lUcssings and praise of Thee are rxrrjn
our hearts. T.ranl all who uorship here'to-
wfgfil and their loved ones a ueek of joy.
fulfillment, health and peace. Amen.
M \usii.\u. H. Ki n.\
301b
From Lifelong Learning. Vol.
COMMENTARY
Common Fallacies in Program
Evaluation
Program evaluation is just one type of
evaluation; examples of fallacies could
equally be given from personnel
evaluation, proposal evaluation, or product
evaluation. But program evaluation is
often very controversial, threatening,
difficult, expensive— and mandatory; so it
affects people profoundly.
Because program evaluation has such a
powerful impact, and because it has so
often been done badly, there is a strong
tendency among program people to avoid
it. It may be useful to mention some
questions that can be used to discriminate
between superficial and serious criticism of
program evaluation. I'll express these
questions in the form of fallacies— that is,
apparently plausible but in fact erroneous
or superficial claims made by program
people. The list is unending, but let me
illustrate the usual errors with just five
examples. You may want to test yourself
by formulating your own comments on
each quotation before reading my
comments. (If you really want to test
yourself, write down your comments; it's
much harder to persuade yourself that
you've actually seen a point if you have a
written record that doesn't include it.)
Just for fun, and because the chance so
rarely arises, I'm going to role-play a tough
evaluator reacting to common defenses or
criticisms coming from program managers;
I'm going to say what the evaluator would
say (at least under his or her breath). Of
course, it would be bad practice to come on
this strong with most program people; but
setting up a tough adversary is a good way
to make yourself face the problems implicit
in the quoted positions.
1. "External evaluation no doubt has its
uses, but it's terribly intrusive and just too
expensive; and all that money comes out of
what we're really here for— to deliver
services."
XLV, No. 64, May 17, 1976, University Extension,
University of California, Berkeley
Responses: (a) You're not "really here" to
deliver just any kind of service, but high
quality service. Good intentions do not
make a good program; either you have a
quality-control system, to see if the
program is good, or you don't. If you
don't, you should be closed down: Why
should you be funded for what may be, as
far as you or anyone else knows, shoddy or
damaging intervention? Even if you have
your own quality-control system, do you
really suppose you can objectively evaluate
your own services? If you do, you're
mistaken. External evaluation Is
essential— not because it's "purely
objective" but because it's more objective
In certain respects than self-evaluation,
especially if you pick your evaluator
carefully.
(b) Calling external evaluation "terribly
intrusive" means that you once had a bad
experience with an evaluator (in which case
you should try again but not until the
evaluation plan reduces intrusion to a bare
minimum), or that you can't tolerate even a
minimum of intrusion (which means you
haven't faced up to what accountability in
the management of funds means), or that
you think your operation can't be improved
(which is touching— but if your operation is
indeed perfect you owe it to the rest of the
world to show us how you became the first
to achieve this, and showing an evaluator is
the least intrusive way to do so).
(c) Calling evaluation "just too expensive"
means either that you've been taken in the
past or that you don't insist that
evaluations pay off for you. Certain types
of externally mandated evaluations, done
for accountability reasons, may have
relatively little payoff for you, but these are
.paid for by the funding agency. Whenever
you have some control over whether or not
to put money into evaluation— as the
comment we're discussing implies— you
should expect and require that the
evaluation gives you a very good return on
your investment. An evaluation can pay
for itself in two ways. First. It can Identify
program components that are wasting
resources; these can then be cut,
representing a direct cost saving that often
covers far more than the cost of the
evaluation. Second, the evaluation can
identify components that are extremely
cost-effective, where you can get more
results for a little extra support than
elsewhere, thereby generating a larger
quantity of quality service for the same
money— again, a major payoff for you and
the client population.
Good evaluators will often make
contributions in other ways: they may be
able to suggest sources of funds that
hadn't occurred to you, or personnel you
need, or ways of making substantial •
savings on copying or communications
costs. It depends on the range of their
experience and expertise. But you should
expect that on the average external
evaluation will pay off in the same way as
other management consulting services or
office equipment— that is, it should
improve your performance and /or reduce
your costs. If you have a truly excellent
program It won't pay you, because there
won't be much room for improvement. But
even a person who feels very healthy
should have an occasional checkup: the
cost of being wrong is much higher than
the cost of the checkup.
2. "Look, it's easy to show that we're
meeting our program goals, which is
exactly what we were funded to do; what is
there to evaluate?" What there is to
evaluate includes, among other things, the
question of whether:
(a) You're also producing unfortunate side-
effects, for example on community
property values (a typical halfway house
problem), on clients (methadone), or on
staff (overwork).
(b) The program goals are still appropriate,
or are appropriate for your clientele in this
location (for example, sex- or race-
segregated experimental schools, separate
special education classes, vocational
training for jobs that no longer exist).
(c) The cost is excessive; could the same be
done for less or more be done for the same
amount? Perhaps the specific goals
(objectives) were set too low.
3. "What we're doing is obviously better
than anyone else in the same field, around
here; and a client /staff survey shows very
positive feelings toward the program. In
short, we have a very high quality
program, and that's not just our opinion,
it's the opinion of some very distinguished
consultants and observers who know this
area."
(a) "Better than anyone else" may still not
be worth funding (electroshock therapy
and totally unstructured classrooms are
possible examples).
301c
(b) Your consultants and local observers
may easily have become co-opted, because
they're paid by you, admired by you, or
related to you (for example, do you refer
clients to them?).
(c) Even if the preceding queries were
answered, there's a basic point that by now
should be recognized as an automatic
refutation of number 3, just as it was of
number 2. It can be summed up in this
slogan: Quality is not enough. Program
people always feel deeply offended by this
assertion — and, indeed, delivering quality
is hard. But it's not enough. Not only
quality but also the severity of the needs
being served, the extent to which other
programs are meeting those needs (that is,
the indispensability of your program) and
the cost of the program must be
considered — in effect, evaluated.
4. "No other program is doing what we're
doing; no one provides the unique
combination of services we offer these
clients." Like the preceding comment
(number 3), this is often uttered in a hurt
tone, as if uniqueness were a virtue in
itself. In human-service areas, from
education to health, uniqueness or novelty
is not a value at all, and it most certainly
does not establish indispensability. At first
it looks as if this comment means that the
program is indispensable, is meeting a
need no one else is meeting. But what
nearly always turns out to be the case is
that no one is offering this combination of
services, though the important components
of the combination are available elsewhere.
Now the decision is much more difficult.
We have to ask whether the convenience of
the single package is worth any extra
expense and perhaps also some loss of
quality in the individual components:
multipurpose agencies rarely perform as
well on each dimension as the specialized
agencies. Uniqueness is not enough
either.
If these are some fallacies in program
evaluation, what is the right way to go
about conducting an evaluation? You can
get a fair idea from my comments on the
fallacies. At the very least, the examples
above should provide you with some idea of
whether you were yourself aware of the
various dimensions in and perspectives on
program evaluation as it is today.
Scriven. Ph.D.. Professor of
Philosophy and Education, and Special
Assistant for Program Evaluation to the
Vice Chancellor, University of
California, Berkeley
'
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A United States Naval Officer in Australia
Kuhn: Now I want to tell you about the two experiences I had in Australia
during the war. The first was in Sydney. A friend of mine in San
Francisco had given me the names of a mother and daughter, friends
of hers, who lived in Sydney and I called on them. When I sat down
in their apartment, I saw on the wall a painting of Yosemite by
Albert Bierstadt, a very famous landscapist, and on the coffee table
was the exact same scene.
So I asked them — I said, "Did friends in America when you visited
there send these?" "Yes." I said, "Well, did the same friends send
both the wall painting and the coffee table?" "No." I said, "Well,
it's the same scene." "Oh, that's true." I said, "Doesn't that
strike you as coincidental?" "Well, maybe." I said, "Do you know
what it is?" "No." I said, "That's Yosemite Valley." "Oh." "And
it's by Albert Bierstadt, a very famous painter." "Oh." So I
thought, "Oh, my God, these people don't even know what they're
• looking at."
A year and a half later, I was in Brisbane in Queensland and I
went to a barbershop. As I sat back in the barber chair for my
haircut, I saw on the opposite wall those two photographs of the
Palace of Fine Arts. Those were about eighteen inches square,
and on the same cardboard mount in the lower corners was a little
print, maybe about three-quarters of an inch square. Someone had
obviously taken that in 1915 during the Fair at the Panama Pacific
International Exposition and then blown it up to show fine-grain
photography. So I looked at that and I said, "Oh, boy, that's
home," and the barber merely grunted. So I said, "Gee, that really
is nostalgic."
So several weeks later, I was back in the barbershop and I said
to the barber, "Boy, I sure like those photographs." He said, "One
of you guys was in here a couple of weeks ago admiring it." "That
was me." He looked at me and he said, "Oh, yeah." I said, "I'd
like to buy them." "Oh, no, I couldn't sell them." I said, "Why
not?" He said, "Well, the walls would be bare." I said, "I'll tell
you what I'll do. I'll buy something else for you and we'll swap.
What do you like?" He said, "Something with lots of color."
So I went down to Trinton's, a big furniture store, and I bought
two paintings. One was a bunch of cows at a water hole and the
other was Cleopatra on her couch surrounded by various people. I
brought them back wrapped up and I said, "Here they are." He said,
"Don't take them out now." I said, "Why not?" He said, "I don't
want to be caught trading with a Yank during business hours." So
when the store closed and the barbershop closed, we swapped them.
He was delirious to have his new paintings and I had these.
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Dorfinan: And you were equally as delighted.
Kuhn: I took them down to the photography store where they were from, and
they couldn't remember who it was in Australia that had taken them
in 1915. Then I took them to a place where I got them framed, and
then I put them up in my BOQ, because at that time I was running a
hotel for the Navy for officers of the various stations around
Brisbane. It was a hotel for boarding and rooming.
My greatest delight was to have any friend from San Francisco
or Cal come and visit me. The first thing that I would do when I'd
see them — I'd take them, particularly if they were Army officers —
first I would give them a great meal because we had good food and
I was the boss. Then I would take them up to my BOQ, and I would
sit them down, and they would see these paintings, these photographs,
and they would say, "It can't be." I said, "What?" "They look like
the Palace of Fine Arts." I said, "Well, they are." "Well, how
could you get them over here?"
I would say, "I want to explain something to you. In the Army,
they have a philosophy: 'You may have to live like a dog, so start
doing it now. Get in practice.' The Navy takes the opposite tack:
'You may never have to live like a dog, so live like a gentleman as
long as you can.' You don't understand the Navy. When we came over
here, they told us, 'Bring your paintings, bring your photographs,
bring your books, your athletic equipment, your records.'"
These guys would look at me completely befuddled, because what
other explanation was there? Where would he get them over there?
You could take them over there. So I had more fun with that! Oh,
God! [Laughter] Great.
The Strybing Arboretum
Kuhn: Now I'm going to tell you a story. I have a friend named Francis
Mair who's a great industrial designer. He's with the Walter Landor
Company and their office is on a converted ferryboat down at Pier 5
in San Francisco. One time they were giving a party for various
friends. I was invited, and he had done some voluntary work for the
Arboretum, so Arboretum people were there.
Now, I was talking with a woman named Mrs. James Kilburg whose
husband is one of the world's greatest inventors. As we were talking,
John E. Bryan, the director of the Arboretum, came in and I introduced
them. I said, "Mrs. Kilburg, I would like you to meet Mr. Bryan,"
and she said to him, "What do you do?" She said, "How did you meet
Mr. Kuhn?" He said, "Through the Strybing Arboretum Society," but as
304
Kuhn: he said it, his mouth vas full of crackers and cheese, and it didn't
come out that way. She turned to me incredulously, "You're with the
Starving Armenian Society?" [Laughter] Fantastic, fantastic.
Well, that about does my humor for the night.
The Jewish Home for the Aged
Dorfman: I'd like to return to your very impressive history of volunteer
activity and contribution and to your work with the Jewish Home
for the Aged.
Kuhn: Well, actually speaking, I started out in the late '30s by going
out there occasionally on Friday nights to conduct Sabbath services.
Then, in '64, I was asked to go on their board of directors. Dan
Koshland was on the nominating committee and I couldn't turn him
down. But I told him, "Dan, look, I'm up to my ears in activities.
I don't know if I'll be able to keep this up." He said, "Well,
start out and see how it goes."
All their board meetings and committee meetings were out at the
Home, which meant that in addition to the time of the meeting, the
travel time — you had to get your car out of the garage — so I didn't
last a full year on their board. I wanted to, because I thought it
was a great thing, but I just was up to my ears. That was the time,
I think, when I quit twelve organizations in one day. Did I discuss
that?
Dorfman: You touched on the incident earlier.
Kuhn: Well, I'd been campaign chairman of the Federation for the preceding
two years, and anybody who's in that position gets invited to be on
other boards. So I was invited to go on the boards of the Home, the
Bureau of Jewish Education, the Jewish National Fund, Magnes Museum.
One night my son Bruce came up to me. I guess he was about seven
and just loved to read. He had my date book. It was a week night,
a Tuesday night.
He said, "Dad, guess what? You're going to be home a week from
Saturday night." I said, "Oh, my God, what am I doing to my kids?"
because I had a full-time job, I was running the Sunday school, and
there were the non-Jewish organizations I was committed to besides
the Jewish ones.
305
Kuhn: The next day, I resigned from twelve organizations, and it was
very therapeutic because if anybody asked me then to go on another
board, I said, "Look, I just quit twelve organizations. What are
they going to say if they find out I went on your board?" And they
understood that. I've never gotten built up to any kind of a load
like that again.
It's just beyond belief if you get the idea that you're that
indispensable, that some organization is going to collapse because
you're not running it, because it's not true. I've seen a lot of
other guys work to death because they're willing, including Federa
tion, to get a willing guy and just run him ragged. They figure
that eventually he may get disinterested anyway, so they might as
well get the maximum out of him while he's interested, which is not
fair to him or his family.
Dorfman: Could you tell me how the Jewish Home for the Aged has changed since
1938?
Kuhn: Oh, it's changed tremendously. First of all, it's much larger now.
They built an addition. Secondly, the age level of the residents
is much higher, at least ten years higher. And, thirdly, they're
much more in need of nursing care because of that age factor. Before,
it was a home primarily for well elderly. Now the great majority of
them need some kind of nursing care. They've got a huge staff of
registered nurses and LVNs, and that, of course, raises the cost
tremendously. But those are the primary changes.
I also did something while I was on their board. I felt, through
this experience with two of my elderly cousins (my father's cousins,
really), that many people who need hearing aids don't get them, and
some people who get them don't need them. So I worked out an arrange
ment at the Home and the San Francisco Hearing Society, and every one
of the residents was tested. If they needed a device, they were
given one. Some wouldn't accept it because of reasons of vanity,
but it was the first time in the United States that any home for the
aged had ever had as comprehensive a survey.
Dorfman: That certainly was very worthwhile.
Kuhn: It was. It was worthwhile because a lot of these people were also
encouraged at the same time to watch KQED. There were lessons on
television in lip reading and this is a very fine thing for them.
It's a huge problem because hearing deteriorates with age so rapidly,
and it's the greatest means of communication, the human voice. So
that was the idea — to preserve that as long as we could.
Dorfman: Was that an ongoing project?
Kuhn: I really don't know what's happened to it since.
306
Dorfman: Would you tell me, please, about your work with the State of Israel
bonds?
Kuhn: That was another one of these short-term things that I had to quit
along with the others. I just couldn't handle it. Mainly what I
did, however, was I gave them leads with union trust funds that I'd
had dealings with, by virtue of my appointment with Blue Shield, so
that gave them some avenues of success. That was the only thing
that I really did for them.
Judah Magnes Memorial Museum
Dorfman: And the Judah Magnes Memorial Museum?
Kuhn: That was on the fringe. I was invited to be on the board and resigned
from them and the eleven other organizations without ever having gone
to a Magnes board meeting. You've got to be really good to resign
from something you weren't even on. As they say in Porgy and Bess ,
"Divorce is a dollar; two dollars to get a divorce if you're not
married." [Laughter]
United Jewish Appeal
Dorfman: And your work with the United Jewish Appeal?
Kuhn: Well, that was the UJ work. Of course, the Federation is a large
part of it because 70 percent of our money goes overseas, but pri
marily we were speaking in all of these different communities, some
times more than once — Spokane, Seattle, Portland, Denver, Salt Lake,
San Diego, Stockton. I'm getting from the sublime to the ridiculous
now — Chico, for twelve people, would you believe? [Chuckles] I
would go anywhere for them. I even went to Hawaii for them. There
you were in Temple Emanu-El in Hawaii and, of course, I belong to
Temple Emanu-El here. But during the 1950s, while they were raising
money to build the temple, the community didn't send one cent to UJA.
Dorfman: On which island is that temple?
Kuhn: This is Oahu. I thought that that was a disgrace. So I arrived on
a Wednesday, only to find my campaign chairman in the hospital. That
slowed me up a little bit. I made some calls on Thursday, went to a
meeting Thursday night of advance donors, and nobody — repeat, nobody-
showed up.
307
Dorfman:
Kuhn:
Dorfman:
Kuhn:
Dorfman:
Kuhn:
Oh, my!
There were just four committeemen who had dinner together, staring
at each other. Then, on Friday, I was supposed to speak at the
Temple at their services, and as I walked up with the rabbi I saw
on the announcement board, "Rabbi Rosenberg will discuss the Dead
Sea Scrolls at Sabbath service." I said, "Wait a minute, I thought
I was speaking." He said, "You are." I said, "Why doesn't it say
so?" He said, "Who would come to listen to anybody from the United
Jewish Appeal?" I said, "Boy, I resent that."
Anyway, the service was very interesting. We had a good audience,
a good congregation. The Torah had been given the congregation by
the last kin g of Hawaii, King Kalakaua, who spoke Hebrew.
Oh.
Yes, and he gave them the Torah.
What year was that?
Well, he gave it before the turn of the century. He was the last
king, and the last queen was Liliuokalani, and then, of course,
America took over in 1900. So that's a famous thing there. Then
I left that night and went back on a midnight flight to San
Francisco, laden with baby orchids, because on Saturday morning
I went to my daughter's religious school class, conducted a model
seder, and gave each of the little girls an orchid from Hawaii,
which was very nice.
But I had one interesting thing, one humorous thing. This group
of four people at this advance meeting where no one showed up — they
thought they had to make it up to me somehow, so they took me out
to the Kuhali Hilton and they said, "Do you see this lobby? This is
the highest lobby of any hotel in the world, and last year we were
thinking of having our congregational seder here." I said, "What a
waste. All that height for those little flat matzos." [Laughter]
By Thursday the campaign chairman was in the hospital, and on
Wednesday he had gotten out of the hospital, but he was so discour
aged by that Thursday night meeting that he didn't come to service
on Friday night. You talk about community support of an outside
speaker — wow! It was unbelievable. But they've done much better
since then. People have gone over there regularly, volunteers and
UJ professionals, and the women's division has been very active,
and it's done very, very well since. It's primarily based on Oahu.
[end tape 12, side B; begin tape 13, side A]
308
Dorfman: I understand that in 1970 you worked for the Council of Jewish
Federations relating with college youth and with the faculty.
Could you tell me about that?
Kuhn: I was a volunteer on the committee, I guess, for colleges and
faculty. We were trying to develop a statewide approach in Cali
fornia to funding Hillel programs, because the common thing is that
the great majority of Jewish children in California go to a state
college campus or a huge state university and generally away from
home.
So I conceived of the idea that it's like taking a voucher with
you. If you stayed at home, your community might fund a Hillel
program at a community college or university near your home. Why
don't they do the same thing if you go away? Because they cancel
out: the northern kids go south, and the southern kids go north.
And we were trying to get the Council of Jewish Federations, which
had just started a program for the Institute of Jewish Life, to
fund an experiment on this basis, but they didn't do it. At that
time, I think I was chairman of Hillel programs for the District
Grand Lodge Number A of B'nai B'rith.
Incidentally, going back just one minute to UJA — this is an
amazing organization. I went to maybe twenty or twenty-five
different communities — Albuquerque, Tucson, all the other ones
I've mentioned — and you just had to say, "I'm with UJA." That
gave you instant prestige because you were there on behalf of the
Jewish people, on behalf of the people that were behind the Iron
Curtain or in Israel who couldn't speak for themselves. It was
just a fabulous thing. Everybody — the whole thing — the people you
spoke with and yourself, you were all — it was like an aliyah.
There was one case in Albuquerque. I went to see a man named
A.B. Cohen. He ran a big chain of drugstores and he was one of the
leading contributors. They said, "If you can get him to go up,
everyone will go up, but he's just had a fire which wasn't covered
by insurance." I said, "Oh, my Lord." So I talked to him at a
special meeting ahead of time, and then I went to this meeting
with these men, and I gave a good talk on what I had just seen
overseas, and he increased.
After the meeting, I said, "Thank you very much. I knew that
anybody named Abraham Cohen wouldn't let me down." He said, "It's
Abraham Benjamin Cohen." [Chuckles] Of course, he had a son who
was just starting at the University of California at Berkeley, and
my friend George Wolf man was the baseball coach there. So I said,
"My friend will look after your son," and he did.
309
Dorfman: I'm sure that was very comforting. To come back to Berkeley for
just a moment, with the funding of the Hillel program — that was in
1970. Can you draw any comparison between 1970 and 1934, when you
were at Berkeley?
Kuhn: The director of Hillel when I was at Berkeley as a student was
eventually a big supporter of the American Council of Judaism, an
anti-Zionist. Well, that isn't going to attract many kids, and it
was just mostly a very heavily Jewish-oriented program in the sense
of studies and so on. I was commuting at that time and I just
didn't — I was involved with youth activities at Temple Emanu-El.
So I really didn't get involved too much in Berkeley Hillel. But
Hillel is as good as the director. I've had enough experience to
know that. If he's good, that's all you need. If he's no good,
nothing else will help.
Dorfman: What was the funding like at that time?
Kuhn: I have no idea. I have no idea. I think it all came out of the
national headquarters of Washington, D.C. I don't think there was
any support by local federations except maybe some mothers' group
or something like that.
Joint Distribution Committee, United Jewish Appeal
Dorfman: In 1952, you were active in the Joint Distribution Committee on the
national council. What were your activities?
Kuhn: Anybody who gets involved with overseas trips for UJA sees a lot of
Joint Distribution Committee activities — relief, rescue, rehabilita
tion — and so it's sort of an honorary thing. They have thousands of
people on this national council. It just means that you get special
mailings of literature to keep you up to date on what's going on in
every community of the thirty countries that are served by JDC.
I may say something else about Berkeley Hillel which was unusual.
Berkeley Hillel, from the time of the starting of the Community Chest
in 1922, was always a Community Chest agency until maybe six or seven
years ago. At that time, the United Bay Area Crusade notified them
on December 15, by letter, that as of December 31 they were out and
funding ceased.
We had a special hearing at United Crusade and we said, "You know
something, we may not be relevant because you are doing a lot of the
stuff with affirmative action and minority groups and protesters and
so on, but I want to say that we've got an ungoing relationship since
1922, and you don't treat people that way. You can pick up the phone
and say, 'I want to talk with you. Can you come down?' You don't
send a cold letter cancelling the whole thing because you will lose."
310
Kuhn: As a matter of fact, they did lose. They did the same thing with
the Children's Hospital of the East Bay, which had not only been an
agency since the beginning, but was the model agency. When anybody
in the East Bay wanted to have a come-see tour for the United Crusade,
they took them to Children's Hospital in the East Bay. Then they
decided to get rid of hospital programs because they decided to put
the money elsewhere, and they gave them the same fifteen days' notice.
Then they softened it by saying, "Well, we'll give you 70 percent of
the money you got last year, but you still have to give 100 percent
of the service," and some hospitals accepted this for a year.
But the Children's Hospital in the East Bay, through its adminis
trator, Harold Norman — he told them, "Anybody that would throw us
out on fifteen days' notice, we don't want to do business with them,
anybody who would treat us that way. We'll take any child from any
place in the world who needs help and can't pay for it, and we'll
take care of that child, and you're telling us we're not relevant to
people's needs?" He also told them, "We'll do find without the
Crusade. We have 6,000 women involved in various auxiliaries and
they will bring in the money that we used to get from you."
I'm not saying that because the United Crusade has perennial
problems. They're having one right now and it involves giving in
to the demands of unions. The Teamsters Union has notified one
agency that they want to unionize the Crusade, and if they don't
organize the United Crusade, they cut off funds to that agency.
Well, that's dirty pool. That's not the first time the Crusaders
caved in on a thing like that. I say that because I'm a big sup
porter of the Crusade idea, but in actuality some of the stupid —
it's beyond belief.
Family Service and Homewood Terrace
Dorfman: The Jewish Family Service and Homewood Terrace are reported to be
merging.
Kuhn: They have.
Dorfman: Were you involved with those organizations?
Kuhn: I was involved in both of them as far as social planning studies by
the Federation were concerned, starting with the one with Homewood
Terrace, when they wanted to abandon the idea of having the campus-
like structure on Ocean Avenue, which consisted of ten cottages,
each holding twenty children. They wanted resident homes in the
Richmond district.
311
Dorfman:
Kuhn:
Dorfman: What year was that?
Kuhn: That was — it was sometime in the '50s, I think. Then they wanted to
move their headquarters from Homewood Terrace over to Richmond. We
had a study, which I chaired, in which we insisted- that the building
they were going to build on Arguello Boulevard, just south of Geary,
had to be built on a module plan, so if the agency ever went out of
business, the building could be sold with the least amount required
for conversion. I don't know what the future of that building is
going to be.
Jewish Family Service — I was involved with studies leading to
their expansion to the Peninsula or Marin. Before that, they just
had an office here, which they still do, of course. But I had
nothing to do with the actual merger, except I thought it was long
overdue and I was all for it because there were a number of children
served by Homewood Terrace. It not only dropped dramatically, but
half or more of the children are non-Jewish, so I failed to see
what the Jewish community responsibility is.
Would you know how those organizations compare today to what they
were like prior, let's say, to 1940?
My first experience with Homewood Terrace involved bringing their
children over to Emanu-El whenever we had a father-and-son night
with the men's club, and if a man had a nine-year-old son we'd give
him a nine-year-old Homewood Terrace boy.
Then our basketball teams at Emanu-El used to play Homewood
Terrace, both in our gym and in their gym. They had a little
cracker box gym and it was worth your life to play in there. There was
no space between the boundary line and the wall, and we had some
really interesting times.
At one time, the Emanu-El father-and-son dinner was at the
Concordia Club, and the Homewood Terrace boys would come, and they
had a swim, and they'd go to dinner. After the war, Emanu-El felt,
"Well, let's popularize our own Temple. Let's have our dinner in
our own gymnasium." So one of the boys came up and said, "Hey, Mr.
Kuhn, what's the matter with this place? No swimming pool!"
[Laughter]
Did I ever tell you about my cub pack with the Homewood Terrace
boys?
Dorfman: You may have.
Kuhn: Well, I had the cub pack at Emanu-El, and we were going to go out
and see the San Francisco Seals play an exhibition game against the
Cleveland Indians, and Bob Feller was going to pitch the Cleveland
312
Kuhn: team. So we got out to old Seal Stadium about 7:45, and you
couldn't get near the ticket booths, and you looked through the
slots, and it looked like the place was packed. I figured, "We'll
never get in." It was a father-son night, so we said, "Kids,
we'll have to go downtown to a movie." "No, we want to go to the
game." [Chuckles] 1 said, "Well, we just won't be able to get
in."
So we were all walking out back to the parking lot, and the
kids were just really downhearted, and I saw these Homewood
Terrace boys, and they were going, it looked like, to the left
field stands. So I said, "Hey, you kids can't get in there."
They said, "Mr. Kuhn, you don't realize we're orphans. In the
first place, they send cabs for us, and in the second place, we
give the grounds people the high sign." I said, "I want to tell
you something, Homewood Terrace boys. You've just adopted thirty-
five younger brothers tonight." So the keeper opened the gate,
they marched in, and we were marching right behind them.
Dor f man: And everyone saw the game that night?
Kuhn: Everyone saw the game. I had another experience with them. My
first experience as a member of the downtown Lions Club was a
Christmas party, to which they invited all of the orphans. They
had Santa Claus and all this stuff. But before Santa Claus could
give his gifts, all these kids from Jewish, Protestant, and
Catholic charities stood up, as if on signal, and they started
to leave. So the chairman of the day said, "Boys, boys, you
haven't even had your gifts yet I You can't leave now." The kids
turned around and they said, "We've got to. We have to be at the
Union Label Christmas party by two o'clock." [Laughter] So I
thought, "Orphans, hell I" That was the last Christmas party the
Lions ever gave.
Dor f man: Are there any other volunteer activities in which you were active?
Marshall Kuhn Track Club
Kuhn: Oh, I think I've covered just about all of them. I think I
mentioned the Kuhn Track Club to you.
Dorfman: I don't think you've mentioned that.
Kuhn: The Kuhn Track Club is an organization I founded about twenty years
ago. Its sole purpose was to encourage friends of mine to go to
the best track meet at Cal or Stanford any year, a meet for which
you had to buy reserve seat tickets. If you waited too late, you
313
Kuhn: wouldn't get a good ticket. Gradually this built up to a huge
thing for the Olympic trials and the Russian meet at Stanford;
I had maybe 125 people. It was just a huge thing.
So my friend Bill Lowenberg wanted to know about it and I said,
"Bill, this organization is the only one you'll ever know that has
no dues, no bylaws, only one officer (and that's me), and its only
meeting is once a year out in the sun without any agenda." He
said, "It's not like any Jewish organization I've heard of, but
I'll join." [Laughter] Last year we went up to Oregon to the
Olympic track and field tryouts in Eugene, ten of us. We had on
our shirts "Kuhn Track Club, San Francisco" and mine was silk-
screened "The Founder."
The Importance of Volunteer Activity
Dorfman: What difference has your volunteer activity made to you?
Kuhn: Oh, a tremendous amount of difference. It's been such a varied
thing. Sometimes it's been merely fund raising; sometimes it's
direct service. For example, when I was in the auxiliary to the
S.F. General Hospital, my primary job was to raise money, and I
would look at people who worked as volunteers in the hospital.
Some of the employees would come back on their day off to feed a
patient, wash them, hold their hand when they were dying, and I
said, "Now, that is service. I don't do that. I don't know if
I could do that."
So you do whatever level you think appeals to you. It's given
me a sense of achievement, of contributing to both the Jewish and
the general community. It's taken care of a lot of nervous energy.
It's taken care of a lot of frustration that I had while employed
by Blue Shield, because I thought I wasn't getting ahead the way I
should have because of various reasons, including some anti-Jewish
feeling, perhaps.
Also, because there were certain things I wouldn't do that one
had to do to get ahead. I wouldn't play politics. So my achieve
ment was out in the community where I could get a sense of satisfac
tion and not have to worry about all this other playing politics,
not that there isn't politics involved in these organizations.
Dorfman: What would you say is your most important contribution?
Kuhn: Well, I would say certainly getting the Blood Bank down to the
point where it no longer uses paid donors. I think it's a great
contribution to the community in terms of health. A volunteer
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Kuhn: donor is a healthier one than a paid donor because of the fact that
a volunteer has no reason to falsify any history of hepatitis, one
form of which cannot be detected by any test, whereas a paid donor
has an economic incentive to lie. It could be a horrible thing,
but it's been done. I wouldn't rate that second to anything, but
I wouldn't want to classify these, because in each case so many of
the results of the things are — you can't measure the results.
Sometimes you touch a child's life and you don't know anything
about it for twenty-five years. Did I mention that situation with
Barbara Berelson?
Dorfman: No, you didn't.
Kuhn: Well, she was in my 1949 confirmation class, and the class met on
Sunday, and that was fine. Then we switched to Saturday, so that
the children could be encouraged to go to services after class.
She had a horse which she rode on Saturday, and so she didn't want
to come on Saturday, and her parents said, "That's okay. You can
make up your own mind." Shortly afterward, she dropped out, and
I figured, "Of anybody in the class, she probably got the least
out of it." Incidentally, Dianne Feinstein was in that class.
Dorfman: Oh, was she?
Kuhn: Yes. She was a lovely girl and she's a lovely woman.
Dorfman: What kind of student was Dianne Feinstein?
Kuhn: She was a good student. She went to Convent of the Sacred Heart
during the week because her mother was Catholic, but that didn't
cause any conflict or any confusion with her. I have known children
that it caused a conflict.
Anyway, years go by, and about three years ago we went to a home
where one of the children was going to go to Israel on the post-
confirmation study tour. The parents had invited maybe six other
sets of parents and their children to meet Rabbi Magid, who was
going to take the class. Included in the group of parents was the
former Barbara Berelson, now Barbara Wiltsek. She said, "Marshall,
you taught me something in confirmation class that I have never
forgotten."
I said, "I can't believe it. What did I say?" She said, "You
were talking about the fact that, all things being equal, you're
better off marrying within your faith than getting involved with a
mixed marriage. That really hit me because I was going around high
school then with a non- Jewish boy, and I really thought about that.
Then years later, when I was in college, I came home one weekend.
Apropos of nothing, I just threw my books down on the table and
said, 'I am never going to marry anybody but a Jew.' My parents
were stunned; they didn't know what I was talking about. I've
never forgotten that in my whole life."
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Kuhn: I said, "I want to tell you thank you, because I would have
guessed because of your dropping out that I had made no impression
on you." She said, "Oh, that's not so." So how do you know? You
never know.
Dorfman: That should have been very rewarding.
Kuhn: It was, it was.
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XV COMMENTS ON PERSONALITIES AND ORGANIZATIONS
[Interview 9: December 27, 1977]
[begin tape 15, side A]
Dorfinan: Did you want to add something about blood banking?
Kuhn: Yes. During World War II, the blood banks throughout America
would reward donors with some booze, and you'd be surprised how
many people were attracted just by a free drink. It's not worth
very much. So in California the Alcoholic Beverages Control
people said, "You can give them a drink, but you can't advertise
it as an incentive. Liquor cannot be used as an incentive."
You can give them a drink if, in your judgment, that would be
helpful, but actually it isn't the greatest thing in the world to
take a drink after giving blood unless you have some food with it.
But, nonetheless, I've seen parties arranged for donors by com
panies who wanted to have a big turnout at which the booze flowed
freely, and it was very, very bad, so it's not used any more in
California. Orange juice and coffee are the big attractions now
and cookies and doughnuts.
Dorfman: Which are much better for you.
Kuhn: Which are much better, much better.
More About Ryozo Azuma
Dorfman: That's an interesting sidelight. All right, you were telling me
that Mr. Azuma was illustrating something relating to his relation
ship with and his memories of Muir by bowing, much to the embar
rassment of his wife.
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Kuhn: Yes. When he had been climbing Mt. Ranier and came across Camp
Muir on the slopes of the mountain, he inquired who Muir was.
When he learned that Muir was a major figure in American conserva
tion and that he was still alive, he wrote to Muir, and Muir said,
"Come on down and visit me." When Muir opened the door of his
home in Martinez, Azuma dropped on his knees, clasped Muir's hands,
and said, "I'm worshipping my idol."
Well, this is what Azuma, sixty-one years later, was demonstrat
ing at this luncheon at the Martinez Adobe on the Muir property,
and this is what caused his wife so much embarrassment. She said
[lowers voice to whisper], "Get up, get up, you're making a fool
of yourself!" But he kept on going, and my wife was just absolutely
thrilled with it.
Dorfman: There was an honorary membership awarded?
Kuhn: We gave an honorary life membership, just recently, to Azuma.
Dorfman: This was the Sierra Club?
Kuhn: The Sierra Club. And he's written, both to the club and to me,
beautiful letters of thanks. He'll be ninety years old on New
Year's Day.
Dorfman: On New Year's Day? That's in just a few days.
Kuhn: Right. And he's writing his twenty-seventh book on Catholic
instruction for children. He's a very devout Catholic who has
never missed Mass in his adult life.
Dorfman: He remains an ardent conservationist?
Kuhn: Oh, absolutely.
Dorfman: Is he still climbing mountains?
Kuhn: I doubt it. He had a stroke in the last few years.
Organizations and Their Jewish Members
Dorfman: We talked also a little bit last week about the names of Jewish
members of the boards of community organizations on which you
served. Could you tell me now of some of your experiences with
some of those people?
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Kuhn: Well, on the Strybing Arboretum Society, Mrs. Jules Heumann (Sally)
is a board member. I didn't know her before, although I knew her
husband back from Sunday school days, and she's just an absolutely
marvelous woman. She spent the whole time during the month-long
strike of park employees two years ago crawling over the fence of
the Arboretum each day to water the plants.
Dor f man: When was this?
Kuhn: This was two years ago. Ira Marquette is our public relations
person on our board. She is from the East. Carol Swillinger is
one of my former eighth-grade students at Temple Emanu-El. She's
a big plant person.
Dorfman: Did you werve with these people at about the same time?
Kuhn: I am currently serving with them. Mrs. Stephen Coney is now on
our advisory council. She's a past president of the Arboretum
Society and she is the daughter of Mrs. A.B. Seroney, who was a
Zellerbach. She was the only grandchild of Jenny Zellerbach who
really cared about plants. Jenny Zellerbach, who died at age
ninety-six a few years ago, had this beautiful home in San Mateo
with a magnificent garden, and she left it to Jane because she
knew she was the only one who would take care of it. It's
absolutely a magnificent place. Now, let's see. [Pauses]
On the Diabetic Youth Foundation, the current president is
Ruth Snow. I've served in that organization for a number of
years; Ben Ereit, the same. Bill Kaplan and his wife Peggy are
among our closest friends.
Dorfman: What can you tell me about those people?
Kuhn: First of all, they're all very close to Dr. Mary Olney, who
started the camp and who has directed it for forty consecutive
seasons. It's a personal commitment to her ideals and dedication,
and they've done many, many things — raised money, provided service,
really kept the thing going. Well, she is the guiding light.
Morris Abouaf. He was a contractor in the East Bay. He had a
diabetic child and he wanted to help the camp. So he did, and
he created our first auxiliary, the Diabetic Youth Foundation of
the East Bay.
Dorfman: What year was that?
Kuhn: That's probably close to twenty years ago. Now, I was opposed to
it because I felt that Morrie was so dynamic and aggressive that
it might be overwhelming, whereas Dr. Olney 's approach was much
more understated. Morrie had the idea, for example, in building
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Kuhn: mass houses, to require all his suppliers to kick in so much for
bathtubs, or so much for a hundred feet of lumber sold, or some
thing like this. I was a little afraid of his approach, but
experience has proven me wrong. First of all, he is responsible
for much of the campus's present development. Then he had a series
of heart attacks and he died.
There were some who felt, as I did, "Well, that's the end of
the East Bay Foundation, because it was all built around him," but
that's not so. There were about twenty Jewish couples who formed
this East Bay group and they have continued to support the camp
every single year. They have an art show in the lobby of the
Paramount Theater. They do a lot of things, and we get approx
imately, on the average, about $25,000 a year from them.
Dorfman: Has his family continued to — ?
Kuhn: His family has continued to support it, but they're not the prime
movers any more. It's sort of rotating. A lot of the early members
of that group are still active, and this is one where I really had
it figured wrong. Now I'm glad to admit it.
There's a woman on the board of the Diabetic Youth Foundation,
Janet Nicklesburg, who's a great person teaching science for
children. I had the pleasure when I was on the Camp Fire Girls
board of having four acres of our Camp Caniya set aside as a Janet
Nicklesburg Nature Sanctuary. It was a big thrill for her and for
us because she's really dedicated her life toward this and also
care of the deaf.
Dorfman: What motivated her to such dedication?
Kuhn: She's just a good person and she loves kids and she loves science.
She'll take a group out to the beach, or she did when she was a
little younger, and every kid will bring a milk carton and go home
loaded with all sorts of horrible looking creatures from the ocean,
much to their parents' dismay and the kids' joy.
Now, in the Young Audiences, there were several people, but the
only one really that I cared much for was Barbara Rodgers (Mrs.
Ernest Rodgers) .
Dorfman: Why was that?
Kuhn: Well, she's just a super person, and the other Jews on the board
weren't very Jewish. This may be a snobbishness on my part to
think that Jewish good works start with Jewish organizations first,
Jewish philanthropy; that the only people who are really going to
help Jews throughout the world are fellow Jews; and if you're only
320
Kuhn: interested in community organizations and turn your backs on your
fellow Jews, to me, you're not as good a person as one who is
dedicated all the way around. As I say, that's a personal predi
lection. I may be wrong, but I don't think so.
Now, in Camp Fire Girls, Dr. and Mrs. Louis Goldstein were both
on the board, and they asked me to go on, and I did. Mrs. Moses
Lasky was on the board. I had had her from the Sunday school.
Mrs. William Corvin.
Dorfman: What kind of people were they?
Kuhn: Well, most of them were people who had daughters who were active
in Camp Fire Girls at some point, either presently or in the past.
These women had been leaders. Bernice Jacobs was on the board —
Mrs. Samuel Jacobs, who became president when I was vice-president
of Camp Fire Girls. They loved the program and its content.
Camp Fire Girls is a marvelous program. It's not a copy of
anything. Girl Scouting is so much a copy of Boy Scouting. Camp
Fire Girls is unique. All things being equal, which they never
are, we'd rather have a girl in Camp Fire than in Girl Scouting,
but, on the other hand, if Girl Scouting had a superior leader,
then that would be a better thing. The quality of the leader is
always more important than the quality of the program.
Dorfman: Is that true, do you feel, in education as well?
Kuhn: Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. Bob Borovoy was active in Camp Fire. He
was our treasurer perennially. He's a good personal friend, a
fellow with a good sense of humor, which you need in a women's
organization. A man must sort of carve out his own niche, as it
were. I'm going to take a little time out at this point. [Tape
interruption]
Dorfman: We were talking about your experiences with Jewish board members.
Kuhn: Well, we had another doctor and spouse who were members on the
board of Camp Fire. In this case, the wife was the physician,
Mrs. Heringhi, and Alan, who was also on the board. He was chair
man of the day camping program. Frequently, a physician will go
on the board because he has a definite role to play, examining
the children before camp and so on. Mrs. Nicklesburg was also on
the Camp Fire board. There was a fellow I had gone to camp with
myself in 1935 and '36, Bob Pollack, who preceded me as camping
committee chairman.
Dorfman: What kind of person was he?
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Kuhn: Bob was the kind who loved camping, but he had never been active
in Camp Fire Girls, and he really was sold the position of being
camping chairman on the basis that it would take him one night a
month. But he found out, in the end, he was home one night a
month. [Chuckles] So he left the board early, and he died a
premature death while he was — dropped dead one day hiking on
Mt. Tamalpais, probably as good a way to go as any.
Dorfman: Had he changed much?
Kuhn: Well, he was always a very intense fellow, very intense. I hadn't
known him all that well over the years. We just knew each other,
but then when we got involved in camping, why — that's probably the
best place for a man to be in Camp Fire Girls, on either the finance
end or camping, because there are so many things of a physical
nature to do. Men have a tendency to idealize the program, the
Camp Fire Girls program.
Dorfman: Why is that?
Kuhn: Because they want their daughters to be following in the footsteps
of their mothers. If you know the Camp Fire Girls song — "With rings
on our fingers and bells on our toes, we go to camp." The third
verse is: "And when we are leaving, our eyes are filled with tears.
It helps to ease the parting if we take some souvenirs." The girls
all unload all the silver they've walked off with. To them it's
just good fun, but it is a lovely program.
Now, on the auxiliary of the San Francisco Hospital, Mrs. Irving
F. Reichert, Sr. was the founder of the auxiliary. That was before
I was involved with it. In the years I was involved with it,
Gertrude Levison —
Dorfman: What was Mrs. Reichert 's primary contribution at that time?
Kuhn: I think she just felt a general satisfaction about serving where
she was really needed. Now, it's very simple to have a hospital
auxiliary at Presbyterian or Mt. Zion or Children's Hospitals —
beautiful institutions, lovely gift shops, people who can afford
to buy the gifts. But at the City and County [Hospital] you've
got far more patients, many of whom can't speak English, who have
no relatives, who have no one to give them good, nice things.
They're in a municipal institution, which considers toothpaste and
toothbrushes luxuries, and the auxiliary had to furnish that.
It's the institution at which the auxiliary members are never
going to find themselves hospitalized, except in the case of an
accident, so it's not the same as being on the auxiliary of Mt.
Zion, where you or a member of your family has been confined,
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Kuhn: sometimes. But it's definitely a place where volunteers are needed,
and she had a very great sense of community commitment. It's going
to this day.
Their big thing, of course, at Christmas time, is to get gifts
for the patients, and the best source of that is to have Herb Caen
put one little squib in his column that it will be a cold Christmas
for the patients at S.F. General unless more gifts come through.
He does the same that he does for St. Anthony's dining room for
Thanksgiving, and the turkeys come through. The power of his
column is unbelievable, unbelievable.
Then, following my years of service on the auxiliary, after I
left, Harold Dobbs, a member of the board, of course, became
president.
On the Sierra Club, I've never served with many Jews. George
Marshall, a past president of the club and of the Wilderness Society,
was one of the three sons of Louis Marshall, one of the founders of
the American Jewish Committee. His father, Louis Marshall, was also
president of the state board of forestry in New York, so that one
of George's brothers, Bob Marshall, went into forestry and was one
of the greatest backpackers in the West. He died prematurely, and
the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area in Idaho is named in his memory.
I mentioned all this one time to Mike McCloskey, the executive
director of the Sierra Club, before he gave a talk one time to a
regional meeting of the Jewish Committee, and he announced that
the two organizations have much in common because the founder of
the American Jewish Committee, Louis Marshall, has a son who is
past president of the Sierra Club. Well, this knocked the American
Jewish Committee people right on their behinds because none of them
knew this, but they figured out where McCloskey got the information.
[Chuckles]
Now, with the scouting movement and the cub pack at Temple Emanu-
El, there were many Jews who were active with me, almost all of them
parents of the boys. There were Josua Kurzman; Perry Harris; Sophie
Weiss; Anita Klein; Bennett and Caroline Raff in, who had two boys
in the pack, both of whom are physicians now.
Dorfman: How did you relate with those people? Were there experiences that
you could tell us about?
Kuhn: I was a cub master really for only a little over two years. The
Temple had never sponsored a cub pack. It had sponsored one of
the finest Boy Scout troops, and I really got sold into this at a
time when I really didn't need any more activities. So I kept it
up as long as I could. Coincidentally, the people who succeeded
me were both good friends of mine and were part of our group of
the Kuhn Track Club that went to Oregon last year — just a coinci
dence.
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Kuhn: Well, some of these people I knew before as parents of these
boys. Others I didn't know before, but I was teaching the Sunday
school at that time, so they knew me. We had a lot of fun. One
of my advantages was that I had never been a scout, although I was
an adult scout leader, so I didn't make the cubs junior Boy Scout
ing, which is what happens many times, and that spoils scouting
later for the boy. I tried to do a little unusual things — take
the kids on hikes, take them over to Cal and Stanford for a football
game. Most of them enjoyed the bus ride more than the game.
We had a night at which the local — what do you call that thing
that they have? It's like a yo-yo.
Dorfman: Jai alai?
Kuhn: No, it's a yo-yo. The local yo-yo champion gave a demonstration.
Then all the boys competed, and then all the parents competed. I
had Rabbi Fine's stepson in the pack, and to see Rabbi and Mrs.
Fine slinging yo-yo's around was just unbelievable, a lot of fun.
At one time, I had as many as fifty boys. Now, in cubbing, the
cub master's best friend is the den mother because she has a
weekly meeting with the boys. Of course, they only come to a
pack meeting once a month, so a lot of these women were den
mothers and would march on Clement Street on Scout Week in their
uniforms. We had a lot of fun.
Dorfman: Would you say that the quality of parent participation was high?
Kuhn: Yes. Yes, because if it wasn't high, I didn't want the boys,
really. I didn't want it to be just a babysitting thing once a
month. Parents had to come with their kids.
Dorfman: Then the people whom you've told me about who served with you
also made valuable contributions?
Kuhn: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Most of them are friends of mine to
this day.
Dorfman: You mentioned Harold Dobbs. What experiences did you have with
him?
Kuhn: I was on the board of the Federation with Harold. I think that was
the only board I was on with him, although I was in organizations
with him in which he had served. Harold's a very fine man, very
dedicated to community betterment, very impatient with inefficiency
or sloppy organization, and he makes his feelings known, and he
gets results. He's very efficiently organized as far as getting
things done is concerned. He's a very fine man. His wife, with
whom I worked very closely on the Welfare Federation, is equally
dedicated. It's a real tough couple. You don't find them like
that very often.
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Dorfman: It's unusual.
Kuhn: Yes. Incidentally, Dr. Goldstein, who with his wife got involved
in Camp Fire, was my wife's obstetrician, and my son is his godson —
Louis Bruce Goldstein and Bruce Marshall Kuhn.
Dorfman: Were there other Jewish people with whom you served on community
organization boards?
Kuhn: I would say lots, but my big contact would be if they were affil
iated with Temple Emanu-El or active in the Federation. And if
they weren't, if they were unaffiliated or belonged to some other
congregation, I wouldn't be as close to them because our paths
didn't cross that much. But, frankly, I looked very closely at
the performance on any board of Jewish members. I expected more
from them because I felt that this was a Jewish tradition, to
reward the community for what they've offered to us. In general,
those expectations were met. Not always.
Dorfman: What can you tell me about the testimonial dinners given you by
Temple Beth El?
Kuhn: When I'd been there ten years, they were going to give a dinner
for me, but it took them about thirteen years to put it together.
I really didn't like it because people had to pay to come to the
dinner. It was before a Friday night service. I guess I shouldn't
have been concerned, but I wanted people to come because it gave
me a chance to tell them what I thought about the school and their
children's Jewish education. But then when I left after eighteen
years, they had a reception on Friday night following the service.
Of course, people paid tribute to me during the service and I
responded.
The rabbi unfortunately was in Cleveland, but his father was
dying at the time, so he asked Rabbi Fine to come down from San
Francisco to San Mateo to conduct the service and to speak, which
was very pleasurable to me because Rabbi Fine and I were very
close. Then at the reception following, I pointed out to the
Temple administrator, Guy Landsberg, that the inscription on the
cake said, "Honoring Marshall Kuhn for eighteen years of delegated
service." [Chuckles] He immediately took a knife and knocked it
all off so no one would realize how illiterate the pastry man was.
One of my remarks was that this was the kind of event I wouldn't
attend unless it were in my own honor. I did attend one event like
this, however, when Sol Madfes retired as principal at George
Washington High School. There was a dinner given in his honor by
his many friends, and I had lived in the same boarding house at
Cal with him. Every speaker was funny. They had Ollie Matson
there, one of his boys, who was one of the greatest athletes turned
325
Kuhn: out in San Francisco. Then they had a fellow there named Allen
Addleston, a faculty member whom I hadn't seen since we went to
camp together in the '20s. He was the funniest of all. If you
would look at him, you would say, "That fellow hasn't laughed in
fifty years." He was marvelous.
We kidded Sol. We had pictures of him, as a three-year-old
baby in Brooklyn, hanging from the walls of the Del Webb Towne-
house. It was just a riot. The whole thing was in marvelous
taste. But most of the time they're just filled with ponderous
and pompous speeches and are terrible.
Dorfman: What kind of tributes were paid to you?
Kuhn: Oh, I guess in connection with my various community services in
Jewish and non-Jewish organizations , and the fact that I had
really extended myself as religious school principal by doing it
by remote control — by living in San Francisco and going to the
Peninsula so frequently. They had given me a tape of it, but I
haven't had occasion in eight years to listen to it. It would be
a little too sad, I think.
Several years ago, they observed their twenty-fifth anniversary
and, of course, invited me to come, but I didn't go because I felt
it would be just a little too much of an emotional wrench. The
people who belong to the congregation now who didn't know me — my
name would be nothing to them. And if they knew me, it would just
be, you know — some of these reunions are tough to do, and I figured
that out in advance.
I did, however, write a humorous article for their ad book — but
that hasn't come out yet — telling some of the funny stories over
the years, and not only funny. I pointed out that each Passover
we tried to have model seders based upon single class's being a
family, with a father of one of the children being the father, and
one of the mothers being the room mother, as it were, providing
the food symbolically, and getting the men to assume this role was
very difficult. So many fathers felt threatened by this situation
of actually going to a classroom with children of their own child's
age and trying to perform the ritual of the seder. Some men would
even go through a week before of rehearsing and then pull out at
the last minute.
Dorfman: Why?
Kuhn: I don't know why — a general feeling of inadequacy in Jewish affairs,
and it's very sad.
Dorfman: What were some of the other stories that you recalled?
326
Kuhn: My favorite one is about a boy who was in the fourth grade and one
winter day came into the office very downcast. I said, "Son, you
look like you've lost your last friend. What's the trouble?" He
said [imitates a saddened child's voice], "The teacher told me to
come to the office. I was bad." I said, "What did you do that
was so terrible, kid?" "We were talking about Hanukkah, and the
teacher asked when would we light the menorah, and I said, 'When
Liberace plays,' and he threw me out of the class!" I said, "There's
a teacher with no sense of humor."
Then I had a request from a woman once who was new to the com
munity who wanted to get her ninth-grade girl in a car pool with a
good looking tenth-grade boy. [Laughter] 1 said, "Until they get
a computer, there's no way we can do it."
There were a lot of interesting things. I remember going down
there one Sunday morning at a time when we were building our new
sanctuary, and we were occupying for Sunday the building we had
previously owned but which we sold to a private school, and now
we were the tenants of a building now owned by someone who had
been our tenant. But we weren't allowed to store anything there,
so every Sunday we had to lug the stuff from a storage depot to
school and back.
So one Sunday I was down there and my pants split at 8:00 in the
morning. School started at 8:45. So I went over to Ben Ashrow's
house and 1 rang the bell. He answered the door and he asked,
"What's the matter?" I said, "Lend me a pair of your pants." He
was the only fellow in the congregation as big as I was, and it
worked out fine.
[end tape 15, side A; begin tape 15, side B]
Dorfman: Was there anything else that you can tell me about either of those
testimonial dinners?
Kuhn: Well, they were very nice. The one, when I was leaving after eigh
teen years, was attended by the president of the congregation and
by every single religious school committee chairman I'd worked with,
ten or more, and even by some teachers who lived far away, or they
sent a message from far away. That was the nicest thing, the
people and their children.
Dorfman: It was obviously quite a tribute.
Kuhn: Well, religious school teachers — and I consider myself a teacher;
the principal is really the principal teacher — they really don't
get as much recognition. They're supposed to be honored on Lag
Baomer . which is a holiday that reform Jews observe very infre
quently. I think it's sad because our schools need improvement
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Kuhn: in motivating people to become teachers by showing that teachers
are held in high esteem as a practical matter, not just a theoret
ical one.
Dorfman: Could you tell me, please, about your experiences at the dinner for
Golda Meir at Madeleine Haas Russell's?
Kuhn: Well, this was not really a dinner. She was going to speak at
Temple Emanu-El at eight o'clock that night. I guess it was about
two years ago. And so a group of our major donors was invited to
meet her at cocktails at Madeleine Russell's home beforehand, and
my wife and I met Mrs. Meir.
My wife was especially thrilled to shake Golda Meir's hand
because she had always heard about this woman. She was very
gracious. She spoke beautifully and, as I remember, someone
quoted that Ben Gurion had said that she was the only man he
really had in the cabinet. She said, "I don't really consider
that a compliment. I'm not a man; I'm a woman."
It was just a very heartwarming evening. People had asked to
make their commitments, and they all increased in her honor, and
then we all went over to the Temple, which was an even greater
affair. The place was packed. They had two overflow rooms with
closed circuit TV. It was just a great evening.
328
XVI OTHER SIERRA CLUB RECOLLECTIONS
Dorfman: You spoke last week of strong personalities in the Sierra Club.
What more can you tell me of such people, especially those who
might have been considered sacred cows?
Kuhn: This stems back from the days when a man could be on the Sierra
Club [board] indefinitely because there was no rule that limited
you to two terms of three years each, as there is now. There
were numbers of men who served in excess of thirty years consecu
tively. They had a tremendous investment in time and friendships
and everything else.
Dorfman: Who were those men?
Kuhn: Lewis Clark, Ansel Adams, Richard Leonard, Francis Farquhar, William
Colby — all men with decades of service. Their friendships were so
close because of their service on the board and,, when hiking to
gether as part of a club group or separately, mingling their lives
socially if their wives got along, so that they frequently began to
think alike. And from that comes the projection that people who
don't think their way maybe are wrong, that there really is only
one side to a question, and that's their side.
This is a natural thing, but when it became involved in what I
choose to call the Brower affair, it was really heading towards a
cataclysm, and this, I think, was a watershed in conservation
history in the United States. David Brower had become the first
executive director of the Sierra Club — I guess, in the late '40s
or early '50s — and he was a dynamo. He started a book publishing
program of format books, he took ads in the New York Times showing
the Sistine Chapel flooded, and a lot of these things he did were
without anybody's approval. He just did them and without regard
to financial consequences. Eventually the board began to figure,
"We have to control this man," and they tried, all to no avail.
329
Kuhn: Now, everybody on the board didn't think he was wrong. Some
agreed with his theory that money is unimportant because if we
lose the things we're trying to protect, what good is money going
to do us, if we don't have the natural world? It got very tense.
The board was really divided. The club was polarized and you had
battles within the club. Actually, organizations of people were
for or against him. Then he tried to run for the board of directors
at the same time that he was executive director and he lost. So
he was out. That was about 1969.
Then people thought that this was going to have a catastrophic
effect on the Sierra Club, but it didn't. The membership continued
to grow. He eventually reconciled himself to this. Many of his
members of Friends of the Earth are present members of the Sierra
Club. He himself has been made an honorary vice-president of the
Sierra Club several years ago and, at the annual dinner this year,
was given the John Muir Award by the club, which is the highest
honor you can get.
So that breach is more or less healed. More or less, I say,
because there are still some people who are very pro or against
him whose rate of mellowness is not the same. But if you were
really involved in the club there and were a strong personality —
you had people on the board, for example, who had a reputation
that they wouldn't ever let anybody else speak. They would just
talk and talk and talk and pay no attention to anybody else and,
of course, this bothered others who felt they had a right to
their opinion. It was a bad situation in that regard because the
margin between the two sides was a hairline, and no board can
succeed that way. You've got to have a better mandate than just
one vote.
Conservation is a subject which attracts people who have very
strong feelings and are frequently able to express them very well.
Dorfman: Can you tell me who participated in each of these actions, who
were for and against Brower?
Kuhn: Richard Leonard, who had gotten Brower active in the club and in
climbing, was really the leader in the anti-Brower forces. A
fellow named Fred Eissler and another one named Martin Litton were
very strongly pro-Brower.
Now, as we participated in our oral history program, we always
asked the interviewee if he were involved in the Brower affair and
what his views about it were. We try to get a balanced viewpoint.
Frankly, we haven't had the opportunity yet to interview too many
pro-Brower people. We hope to rectify that.
330
Kuhn:
Dorfman:
Kuhn:
Dorfman:
Kuhn:
Dorfman:
Kuhn:
Dorfman:
Kuhn:
Every interviewer and every interviewee who has spoken about
it admits that Brewer's a great conservationist, but they felt
he was uncontrollable, fiscally irresponsible, not a good admin
istrative organizer. He would have been ideal as the club's
conservation director and not as its executive director.
Joel Hildebrand, a past president of the club and a world
famous chemist, felt that Brower was ignorant from the chemical
standpoint. He just didn't understand some of the reactions that
go on when natural compounds of the earth — which is a technical
defect, but much of conservation hinges upon technical knowledge
nowadays. It's possible when we finish all this that we may put
out a book tentatively entitled The Brower Affair showing all the
views on both sides.
That's under consideration now?
That's under consideration. Dick Leonard, for example, in his
interview (the first and only one we've finished under complete
ROHO auspices), has seventy-two pages on Brower, which I contended —
I was in on the interview. I said, "These are printed on asbestos."
But they weren't quite that bad, and the Browers and the Leonards
are very close personal friends again. It takes a real tough hide
to lose a conservation battle and still maintain your goodwill and
sense of balance and good humor.
One of my questions is, are you aware of Jewish members in the
club's early days?
No.
You did mention a Jewish president.
That was George Marshall. We finished his interview and we can't
get him to commit himself to edit it. It's taken about three years
now to convince him to get around to editing it, and you know the
dangers of an unedited interview. Incidentally, I spoke with the
Lowie Museum of Anthropology at Berkeley today because I noticed
that the Chronicle announced that NBC is going to produce a three-
hour program on Ishi. Of course, I have those tapes, so it's
possible I'll be called upon to do some consulting on that. I
hope so.
That would be very exciting,
tion.
That would be an important contribu-
My fear is that if they just take the books on Ishi and accept them
as completely factual, they'll misrepresent the whole — not the whole
thing, but a good part of the story.
331
Dorfman: Can you tell me, please, about internal divisions within the Sierra
Club over such issues that you've mentioned, such as McCarthyism?
Kuhn: The McCarthyism issue came out of the Angeles Chapter, and Southern
California, as you know, is more conservative than otherwise. They
thought it would be a good idea to have a loyalty oath to join the
Sierra Club and, of course, many of the liberal members of the club,
who were far in the majority, felt that this was ridiculous.
There's no real point of having to declare your loyalty to the
country just to climb a mountain, and also it violated the principle
that the only authority for acceptance to membership is the board
of directors and that its local chapter doesn't have that authority.
In Southern California, the local chapter wanted to have that
authority, and their base of operation was a Friday night dinner
held in downtown L.A. every week, in which all of the chapter's
business was transacted. They wanted to interview prospective
members, and not just about loyalty, but about their race and
religion in some cases.
But when it came to a national vote of the club membership on
this loyalty thing, it lost by eight to one, but it only lost two
to one in Southern California. But that's long gone. It took us
a long time to get any Southern California interviewee to even
discuss this. They didn't want to talk about anything unpleasant.
But it's a part of the history of the club.
Of course, now you don't have to have a sponsor, but at one
time you had to have two sponsors because they wanted people to
be in the club who were like they were, and they had a reputation
of being elitist. We still don't have enough minority membership
in the club.
Dorfman: Were there tensions between Northern and Southern California?
Kuhn: Oh, yes.
Dorfman: What about those?
Kuhn: At one time, the Southern California contingent on the board felt
that the Northern California people were out to get them. It was
a personal thing. Of course, this was a time when there weren't
many chapters or groups about the country. The Angeles Chapter
had been the first one, and most of the board, of course, came
from around the Bay Area, and here we had five from Southern Cali
fornia. I think, about five; I could be wrong. But once they
began thinking that they were being persecuted, I guess maybe the
people who were being suspected of being the persecutors maybe
adopted that stance. I don't know. It was very unpleasant, and
it's all over, as far as I know.
332
Kuhn: Now, these differences, of course, can rise in other forms
later on. However, the club is now national in scope. You have
had presidents who have lived in other states. The present pres
ident, Bill Futrell, is from the South. Larry I. Moss had a base
of operation in Washington, B.C. when he was president, and this
has added a whole new dimention. Before, it really was a California-
dominated organization, so that's really a — there's more chance of
there being three or four physicists on the board than three or four
people of the same state.
I think that one of the toughest things is to vote for Sierra
Club directors, because they're all so qualified. It's difficult
to make a decision if you don't know them personally and to main
tain a balance on the board.
Dorfman: Were there other divisive issues?
Kuhn: One of the things we've always had to contend with is the question,
when is an issue a local one and when is it a national one? It's a
local issue capable of being national in scope if it involves a
precedent in conservation. Generally, the feeling is now that if
it's a local issue, a local chapter or group takes care of it.
But there was one case at Nipomo Dunes in San Luis Obispo
County. PG&E wanted to build a nuclear reactor, and the club
learned that the Nipomo Dunes were really a unique formation in
the world. For thousands of years, the sand had a grain in one
direction. In the last several hundred years, the sand grain was
exactly ninety degrees perpendicular to that original direction,
and no one knew why, but it was scientifically unique.
So the club urged the PG&E to site the plant somewhere else,
and they picked a place called Diablo Canyon, and we told the PG&E
the Sierra Club would stand by that choice if the PG&E wanted to
develop there, and they did.
Then someone found out that Diablo Canyon had a big earthquake,
so they wanted to change our stance once again. We had a plebi
scite in our club and we affirmed the Diablo Canyon site on the
grounds that to change it again would destroy our credibility.
You can't change for every one point. You have to say, "This is
it. We've studied it and this is our decision." If you study it
and you can't come to a decision, then you're not really entitled
to have that much influence. So that really deserved our credi
bility.
I think since then, however, that the PG&E had discovered for
itself that there is an earthquake hazard down there. In any case,
the plan isn't complete yet. Richard Leonard's wife is now a member
of the board of directors of the PG&E, and maybe that's the way to
do it. If you can't lick them, join them.
333
Kuhn: Each board of directors' meeting (which occurred generally
quarterly), the agenda will be a two-day meeting. The agenda
may have a hundred items, single-spaced typing of twenty pages
for the minutes. To process this many items in advance and do
your homework and your committee work requires a tremendous
commitment on the part of any conscientious board member who
has all this great scientific knowledge.
Ansel Adams told me that he didn't feel he was qualified to be
a board member any more because he's a generalist. He's not a
scientist. You start talking about pollution in the atmosphere
and using chemical terms and requiring chemical knowledge. This
is really a highly specialized field. You have to know all about
sun's rays, and there aren't many people who have this knowledge.
But he wasn't one of them, and he knew it.
Sometimes legal principles are involved, so a lawyer's services
are involved, or maybe a financier's, but someone who has to bring
some specific skill to the board; or you can still be a generalist,
but you better be a very well informed one, able to pick between
opposing viewpoints or to realize they're both wrong or both right.
There are some tough choices that have to be made. But that will
be the case always.
But if they hadn't — in the fall of '70 at a board meeting up at
Clair Tappaan Lodge, Adams and Leonard made and seconded a motion,
which was carried, which limited a board member to two consecutive
terms of three years [each], and then he'd have to step down and
run again; it had to be at least a year in between.
The first one that this affected was Wayburn, who thought that
this motion was really directed at him, but it wasn't. It was just
that Leonard and Adams felt that this was the time to eliminate
domination by a few and give the growing numbers of young, and not
so young, qualified persons a chance to serve on the board. If you
hold a board office for thirty years, a board position, when will
anybody else get a chance? It's been a lot healthier, I think.
We've had a number of qualified women. Claire Dedrick, who was
a vice-president of the club, became Governor Brown's secretary of
natural resources, although she's since given up that post.
People make a big mistake when they think the Sierra Club is
really monolithic. The Sierra Club believes that — well, some people
believe it, perhaps a majority. Perhaps the board has taken a pos
ition after investigation. It doesn't mean everybody believes it,
because it's just too diffuse a membership.
Dorfman: Was the tax status of the club a divisive issue?
334
Kuhn:
Dorfman:
Kuhn:
It was at the time. A friend of mine, Sheldon Cohen, who was then
commissioner of the Internal Revenue, told me later that there was
absolutely no need for the club to have lost its tax exemption.
It was possibly the only nonprofit organization in the country who
ever lost their exemption. But when the IRS challenged the club
that it was spending too much money on trying to affect legislation,
which is a real test — the key word is "substantial," "substantial
portion of your resources" — and the question is, what does "sub
stantial" mean?
Well, now, in the last year or two, the IRS has adopted certain
definitions. But it didn't have any then, and Brower took a very
uncompromising viewpoint. The IRS, I guess, knew that the directors
of the club were very concerned about this, about the possibility of
losing the exemption, and, in anticipation of it, they [the directors]
had formed the Sierra Club Foundation, which is a tax-deductible
organization to which contributions are given which cannot be used
to affect legislation, whereas my dues to the Sierra Club can be
used in legislative ways. It was just a question of Brower or the
IRS.
Well, the government was not going to back down. After all,
they've got the big chips, and we lost it, and we lost some finan
cial support, but anybody who wanted to give big money would give
their regular membership contribution to the club and then give the
balance to the foundation.
We also have a thing called the Legal Defense Fund, but that's
really for court work, not in Congress. That's the difference.
Affecting legislation is an entirely different thing.
Now, there are some people who feel that we ought to go the
whole way, that we should abandon our present organization so that
we could, in effect, endorse candidates, not just issues, and that
the real tax angle has nothing to do with it because you're only
going to pay tax if you show a profit, and we don't show any profit.
But there's been no budging either way, either trying to get the
exemption restored or to change our organization even further.
People, I think, are reconciled with the whole idea, so the average
person's dues, the average deduction, is very small. But it was
divisive.
What about the issue of nuclear power? How divisive is that?
How divisive was it or is it? I don't really know. That's an area
in which I lack the scientific competence. There are all sorts of
reactors. There are all sorts of problems of disposing wastes and
the safety of it. I'm sure the average club member was for state
propositions. I think it was Proposition 15 that lost, but they
335
Kuhn: didn't lose until the legislature had already adopted most of the
provisions of that proposition in regular legislation, as opposed
to the initiative.
Richard Leonard, I know, thinks that the future of the energy
problem in America is through nuclear power. It is divisive, but
I couldn't participate in that because I'm not really informed,
except that I was for the proposition because it said you can't do
anything until you prove what you are doing is safe, and it can be
made safe, but you have to spend more money and take more time.
That was the issue.
Dorfman: We talked a little bit about the possible opposition to Jewish
members.
Kuhn: Well, that was a long, long time ago and —
Dorfman: About what time would you say?
Kuhn: About from the earliest days up to maybe the early '30s or middle
'30s. I don't think it was ever as strong here as in Southern
California. I'm not sure how strong it was down there. I know
that it did exist, but to what extent, I don't know. For every
Jew who might have been excluded, there might have been ten who
were accepted without anybody referring to the fact that they were
Jewish. I just don't know.
Dorfman: Do you know of opposition to Jewish leadership?
Kuhn: No, I really don't. You see, you can be a leader of the club with
out being a national leader. There are plenty of Jews, locally or
regionally.
Dorfman: So, in answer to the question, is there any substance to the claim
of anti-Semitism?
Kuhn: I don't think now you could substantiate that. I don't think there's
any evidence about that.
Dorfman: Other than what you have just cited?
Kuhn: The current editor of The Sierra, which is the new name of the
Sierra Club Bulletin, is a Jewish woman, Frances Gendlin, who
at one time was the editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,
and that is the first time a Jew or a woman has been editor of the
Sierra Club Bulletin. Before that, they were either prejudiced
against one or the other, but I suspect that their prejudice against
women was even stronger.
336
Dorfman: You may be right. How has your involvement in your activities
changed the Sierra Club?
Kuhn: Well, I don't know if it's changed it much. The leadership of the
club and some of the membership realize now that we do have a history
program and what it consists of, because every year at the annual
meeting I have the chance to present completed interviews. I've
done that four times now.
So they know we're interested in documenting the history of the
club, and not just for nostalgic purposes, but for increasing our
batting average, as it were. Now, eventually someone will really
use the materials we've produced for some great research program
and analysis. Someday, perhaps, we'll have the Sierra Club fellow
ship in conservation history over at Cal. Since we announced last
fall that the interviews are available for purchase, we've had a
number of purchases by groups.
[end tape 15, side B; begin tape 16, side A]
Kuhn: A number of purchases by groups and chapters throughout the country,
and there'll be more, so that people at the local level will be
reading these interviews, which really do no good if they're just
sitting on the shelf somewhere in a library. That will make the
difference, I think, particularly if someone comes along and begins
writing a history of the Sierra Club in which they take excerpts of
these interviews and weave them in. I think that's the only thing
that you could say for it, that generally you've created a greater
consciousness of our history.
Of course, we don't have yet any general history of the club.
We have Jones's "History of the First Twenty-Two Years." We,
perhaps, may have the years from 1914 to 1940 covered. There are
authors who talk about doing a whole history of the club, but I
haven't seen any yet. But the average member coming into the club
really finds it difficult to get a whole, lucid picture of the way
the club developed and changed. He can find it in the Sierra Club
Handbook, the chronology of key dates, but there's nothing that
fleshes out the story.
You talked about this prejudice. I only went on one High Trip.
That was the first year I joined. A day or two before we finished
the two-week trip, we went to a canyon, and there was a party up
there given by old-time members of the club at which selected
freshmen, the first-timers from the High Trip, were invited. I
was invited, perhaps because I had been part of the group that
had taken the side trip up to Whitney.
It was called a "Penny Royal Party." Someone had lugged into
the Sierra all this way a bottle of bourbon, and they picked all
these penny royal herbs and took the Sierra Club cup and filled it
with ice, and you made yourself a nice little drink.
337
Kuhn: This had a ritualistic character that I didn't really catch at
the time, until I realized later that there were a lot of freshmen
on the trip who weren't invited to the party. Now, no one kept a
record of who came and who didn't come, and I would say in the years
since, perhaps, I've encountered only one or two people out of the
250 who were on that trip. But I was not a very avid High Tripper.
Some people may go twenty or thirty years at a time.
But I realize now that this was their way of saying, "We still
consider the party a social organization, and we want to maintain
our own friendships this way and extend a hand to new people on a
selective basis." For example, they couldn't keep me out of the
club if I got the signatures, but they didn't have to have me in
their Penny Royal Group. On the other hand, I could have started
my own Penny Royal Group. This is what a lot of people don't
realize. It can work both ways.
Dorfman: So there might have been exclusion —
Kuhn: But I'm sure that everyone who was a first-timer was not at that
party, and I'm sure that there every old-timer wasn't at the party
either. It was just a group that considered themselves old-timers.
338
XVII FAMILY AND SIGNIFICANT PERSONAL VALUES
Marriage to Caroline Nahman
Dorfman: This would seem a good time to ask you about your wife, Caroline.
Kuhn: Well, she is a sensational person and tremendously dedicated in her
own way. She was trained as a social worker and went to work for
the juvenile court, where they placed her as the teacher out at the
Ocean View School for Girls out at 48th Avenue and Noriega, long
before there was a youth guidance center in San Francisco. So
while she was working there as a social worker and teacher, she
had to pick up a teaching credential, which she did.
We were married in 1950 and she gave up her job. Then, when our
oldest child entered Madison School, my wife decided to find a place
in the school where she could sort of hide from the possibility of
ever having to be on the PTA.
She noticed that there was a library in the school, but there was
no librarian, so she became a volunteer librarian and found children's
books so fascinating that she went back to school at night and got a
degree in librarianship and started doing work in service, work for
Cathedral High School, which is a Catholic four-year girls' high
school in San Francisco.
After several years of that, they asked her to become the director
of counseling and guidance, and she protested that she had no direct
training for this, and they said, "We think you do, and the girls
respect you. They know you have children their own ages, and what
you don't have technically you can pick up along the way," which she
has done, because she continues going to courses, seminars, insti
tutes, reading. She's doing a very fine job. You might wonder
what a Jewish mother is doing as a director of counseling and
guidance in a Catholic girls' school, and all I can say is that it
couldn't have happened twenty years ago.
339
Kuhn: Now, she herself has been very active in organizations, and my
oldest daughter and I jotted down a number of them just to see if
she could come up with a list. In the Jewish field, she was pres
ident of the Emanu-El Residence Club, vice-president of the Jewish
Family Service Agency, and vice-president of the Temple Emanu-El
Sisterhood. She was treasurer of the San Francisco Committee of
Brandeis Women. She was director of the Jewish Welfare Federation
in the women's division. As a matter of fact, we were on the
Federation board together because she was president of an agency,
and when her term ended she thanked the board of directors for
allowing her to have lunch every month with her husband.
Dor f man: What year was that?
Kuhn: I guess that was about 1962 or '63. Then she's been active on the
National Council of Jewish Women, was a member of the national
study "Windows on Day Care."
Dor f man: When was that?
Kuhn: That was about five years ago. Then she's been very active in a
rap room project, and she was also chairman of the Mt. Zion Hospital
teenage volunteer program. Now, those are the Jewish organizations.
To look at the non-Jewish organizations — she was on the board of
the Women's City Club; the Page-Laguna Neighbors' Association; the
Richmond Maxi Center, which is a relatively new mental health pro
gram in the Richmond district at which the majority of board members
are required by law to be Asian. She is presently on the advisory
board of St. Elizabeth Hospital, and she was a Camp Fire and Blue
Bird leader. She's an officer of the Northern California Personal
Guidance Association, was very active in the United Way, and was a
member of three PTAs simultaneously, as was I.
So, besides that, she's a sensational wife and mother. But she
really sometimes put me to shame as far as her activities were con
cerned.
Dorfman: She certainly sounds very active.
Kuhn: This is a whole lifetime. She continues to get into things that I
don't find out about for quite some time. She says, "By the way,
our new board that I'm on is meeting at our house tomorrow night."
I say, "What new board?" "Oh, didn't I tell you?" "No, you didn't."
"Oh, I meant to."
Dorfman: Why is she a sensational wife and mother?
Kuhn: Well, because she sees potential in children and she wanted her own
kids to develop their own potential. All three children are differ
ent. She has a very great compassionate heart. She's the type of
340
Kuhn: person, if she hears some rumors that somebody said that she and
So-and-So aren't getting along or something, she'll call that per
son and go over and see them and say, "Look, let's talk this out."
She just won't sit there on grudges which the average person would
allow to fester.
There are some activities, of course, in which she and I have
been active together and on which we've both been active but not
at the same time. She's an excellent board member of any organiza
tion because she knows her stuff.
Dorfman: What special qualities does she have as a wife?
Kuhn: I mentioned compassion. She has extreme conscientiousness. Her
father was ill the last five years of his life. He didn't want to
go into an institution. He could afford to live at home. He didn't
want anybody to take care of him. So every bit of food he ate the
last five years, she cooked for him, and once or twice a week I
would lug it to his house in my car and put it in his refrigerator.
He wanted it that way, and she knew it, and when he passed away she
had terrible misgivings that maybe she hadn't been as dedicated a
Jewish daughter as she should have been. But, believe me, no one
could have been more dedicated.
Dorfman: It certainly sounds that way.
Kuhn: She has had her own health problems and she's living above them.
She believes that it's very important to be active, to give what
you have — for which you should be thankful — to others, to make it
a better world, regardless of race, color, or creed. When she was
about five, her mother died and her father had her raised by a
housekeeper who was Catholic — she and her younger brother — so she's
always had an excellent relationship with Catholics, as evidenced
by her present position.
She's always had excellent relationships with any minority group,
and she can see beyond — as a matter of fact, a week ago Saturday
night she attended the debut of the president of her student body
at the Links Cotillion, which is an all-black cotillion. She was
one of the few Caucasian people present. Why? Because that girl
wanted her there, because she looked up to her.
Dorfman: That invitation was tribute.
Kuhn: Yes, and she went to the cotillion from a concidiada, which is a
ceremony held at the Cuban Club at 26th and Army, where one of her
sophomore students had sort of had her debut. So frequently my
wife is the only faculty member to be invited to these things be
cause, again, the kids have the feeling that she's interested.
What is the evidence?
341
Kuhn: Well, she gets them summer jobs, she helps them get into college,
and she helps them guide themselves toward a successful high school
career and college entrance. She put on a program a month ago at
which about fifty women participated to show the kids that a woman
can make it. She had women physicians, women attorneys, women FBI
agents. She had a few men in the program, but she really didn't
want them, but for one reason or another she couldn't get women in
those particular roles.
These women were very frank with the children. They said, "Don't
go around feeling sorry for yourself because you're a minority or
you're a woman." (Because this school is very heavily minority even
though it's a private school.) "I made it and you can make it, but
you have to work." This had a very strong effect on them. When one
of her kids gets a scholarship toward a college or ends up in
medical school, my wife has a very justifiable pride.
Dorfman: How would you characterize your marriage?
Kuhn: Oh, I think it's been excellent. I was married before in Australia.
I was married to an Australian girl, not Jewish, during the war.
It lasted five years. It never would have taken place had there
not been a war. Happily, there were no children. It was pretty
amicable. We were divorced in 1949, and I met Caroline shortly
thereafter at the home of Rabbi and Mrs. Fine.
Mrs. Fine was the shadchen. She claimed she never was more
successful. It was one of those second time around things. The
older I get, the more fortunate I realize I've been. I think she
feels the same way. My only regret in my married life is that I
took up too many outside things and deprived myself of my children's
company and them of mine, and that I wouldn't want to do over again,
but I did it.
Dorfman: What are the special qualities of your marriage that support your
relationship?
Kuhn: We're interested in the same things. We're interested in kids,
social betterment, liberal trends, hard work. There are certain
things we've always done separately. I've always -taken the kids
up to the mountains by myself because my wife no longer hikes that
way and she thinks it's great for the kids to be with their father.
My kids have asked her, "Don't you and father ever fight like
we see other kids' parents fight where the husband comes home drunk
or something?" My wife said, "No, we never had any like that."
Well, the kids find it almost impossible to believe and they say,
"We're so lucky having you and Dad."
342
Kuhn: Another thing we have going for us is the fact that we've lived
in the same house here for twenty-five years, so that even though
the oldest one was eight months when we moved here, she doesn't
remember any other place but 7th Avenue, and that is rare today.
Dorfman: Yes, it's unusually stable.
Kuhn: I don't know. I never really tried to analyze it. I just maybe
had my fingers crossed, but you don't analyze it. You just let it
be. A woman of valor. Her price is beyond rubies.
Dorfman: What particularly is the most important in helping you and Caroline
to endure difficult times?
Kuhn: I think mutual love and the desire to support each other. We've
had some pretty severe health problems, which I think are the
toughest thing we've had. We haven't had any real health problems
with our children. We've had the normal amount of debts — her
father, the woman who raised her, my brothers, nothing beyond —
they've always been in the natural sequence of things, the oldest
ones dying first.
Again, I think it's trying to put yourself in the shoes of the
other person. How would you feel? What would you want? When I
write a note to someone who's suffered a loss, I always like to
say, "My thoughts are with you at this sad time," and that's the
greatest thing you can do, to let someone know that you're thinking
of them.
Dorfman: What things would you say that your marriage has meant to you?
Kuhn: Well, it was the difference between happiness and misery. I told
Caroline before we were married, "I've got to have a child, or
I'm going to die." She's been a marvelous mother. I think married
life for the average male, heterosexual male, is just a natural
thing. I can't see really any satisfaction without it. I don't
believe in all this experimental thing where they say, "A man can
get anything he wants without having the obligation of marriage."
I think that obligation and responsibility are the hallmarks of a
responsible adult. Unless you are willing to take the responsibility,
you don't have society. Someone has got to say, "I'm responsible."
Children
Dorfman: What did you mean by that statement to Caroline that you had to
have a child?
343
Kuhn: I just felt then that time was passing me by, unless I had a child.
It wasn't so much continuing my name. I just felt, well, I guess,
the male equivalent of whatever a woman feels when she wants to be
a mother. It was just a very emotional statement I made without
premeditation. But she really liked my saying it.
I was the kind of father who, within twenty-four hours of the
birth of our first one, had already sent to my child in her mother's
room at Children's Hospital a huge teddy bear about three and a half
feet high named Cocoa Brownie. Our first child, incidentally, was
born on November 30, 1951, the only date in history that the Golden
Gate Bridge was closed to traffic because of storms. The wind was
blowing over the top of Tamalpais about 150 miles per hour, and the
bridge was swaying tremendously. Subsequently, the bridge was re
inforced so it couldn't sway that much, but that's an easy date to
remember. We called her "Stormy" for a while.
The Meaning of "A Jewish Family"
Dorfman: What does the phrase "to have a Jewish family" mean to you?
Kuhn: Well, again, it starts with responsibility. The traditional Jewish
family has been observant. The parents let the children know by
direction and indirection that their religion means something to
them — what they believe; how they do it; the social responsibility;
the relationship between husband and wife, between parents and
children, and between the family and the people with whom they do
business, with whom they go to school, and so on. And the kids
get the message, generally.
When I say acting responsibly, it means putting yourself in
secondary positions very often. You just don't do what you want to
because that gratifies your desires and needs or what you interpret
them to be. Generally you get the implication of that by looking
at your own parents. My mother was that way. The kids finally —
I think they catch on, particularly when they begin to observe the
way things are in the homes of friends. I was really amazed at
their perception, because they'll know more about what's going on
in their friend's house than I would.
We adults always have our defenses up. You go to a cocktail
party across the street — it's a show. Only with real close neigh
bors do you ever let your guard down. But the kids are there much
more around the clock, and they hear the other kids talk, and they
get the feeling whether their friends really care for their parents
or have any respect for them.
344
Kuhn: I would want my kids to have respect for me, and I told them
years ago that I want them to have respect for each other. I
didn't want them to fink on each other. I wanted them to have
more loyalty to each other than they have to me, because they're
going to be with each other longer, and that message got through.
I don't know. It's not by reading Dr. Spock, because I never read
Dr. Spock. It was always one of the books I was going to read,
but we had three children before that ever came up to the top of
the list.
Dorfman: What other Jewish values did you emphasize to your children?
Kuhn: When you say Jewish values, they are really values of simplified
living, starting with the Ten Commandments and everything else we
read in the Torah — truth, honesty, mercy, compassion, love, not
coveting, not hurting anybody else, not telling lies about them.
I'm not really so concerned with belief, because who knows what's
on another person's mind? And though he may say he's God-fearing,
his concept of what God is is his, whether it's a life force or
an anthropomorphic figure, and it really doesn't make any differ
ence. If you feel there is something in the universe stronger
than you, bigger than you, that's good enough for me.
But it's what stems from that, what kind of a feeling. One of
my points in confirmation was the moral order of the universe. If
you believe in that and what stems from it, that pretty much explains
what Jewish values are. They certainly are not the gratification of
instant desires.
One is the preservation of Jewish life, survival, particularly
in this twentieth century, with the holocaust and with Israel.
We've had a huge history in geography lesson.
I don't want to imply anywhere that just because I've made these
statements that I think I'm uniformly successful at having achieved
all these things. I never have; I've known that for a long, long
time. Maybe you learn it quite by accident; maybe somebody tells
you what your child thinks of you.
I find that I'm very close-mouthed and uncommunicative in many
things. When I was a young man, I would have no more told my
mother the name of any girl I took out— "What time did you come
home last night, Marshall?" "Plenty past twelve," hoping she'd
think I said, "Twenty past twelve." [Chuckles]
Of course, those are the things you have to respect for a kid's
privacy. I would not open any of my child's mail, no matter how
enticing, without asking, any more than I would expect a child to
open my mail. Of course, I contend that a boy reaches maturity at
345
Kuhn: six, because that's the maximum age at which he could enter a
ladies' room with his mother, and after that he's got to be with
his father.
Dorfman: How would you say this compares to what "to have a Jewish family"
meant when you were a child?
Kuhn: There were a few overt evidences of Jewishness in my family. As I
say, on the Sabbath our house was cleaned beautifully. We never
had a Kiddush. We had beautiful napery and silver and china and
glass crystal. But there were no services, and my parents belonged
to Temple Emanu-El, and they attended very often. But we weren't a
religious family in that sense.
But there was nothing in the neighborhood to compare it with.
We didn't live in an orthodox neighborhood. I never saw it in
the homes of any other Jewish children, not that I went to very
many of their homes. So I would say that we created our own Jewish
environment, which is possible to do, and as a Jewish educator I
have always stressed this because there's no way you can do the
Friday night Kiddush wrong. If someone's trying to find out — if
someone considers the Friday night Kiddush like a Japanese tea
ceremony, they've got the wrong idea. It's not that perfect; it's
of the heart.
Maybe that's why Catholic children have asked me — when I've
talked to groups about Jewish holidays, their first question is,
"Tell us about a Jewish wedding," because they've all seen Fiddler
on the Roof and they know there's something special about this.
As a matter of fact, at this next cotillion when the debutantes
finish doing the minuet, the orchestra plays dances and each girl
dances the first dance with her father to the music of "Sunrise,
Sunset." "Is this the little girl I carried?"— it's universal.
Dorfman: Would you say, then, that the values you have attempted to instill
in your own children are the values that you saw in your childhood?
Kuhn: Oh, yes, yes, very definitely, very definitely. I still go along
with Stevenson. To him, the greatest virtue was kindness, because
he was on the brink of death so often with his tuberculosis or
whatever it was, and when someone was kind and gave him a hot meal
and took care of him, this was kindness. It didn't cost anything,
but he never forgot it, and we lack a lot of that today. "We'll
drink a cup of kindness yet for auld lang syne," as Bobbie Burns
said.
Dorfman: If I were to ask you how did you raise your children, what would
you say?
346
Kuhn: I would say mostly straight, but with a lot of tempering. For
example, when my son reached the age of eight, I tried to get him
to visit the Cub Scouts and couldn't get him to do it. Then I
realized that I had never been a Cub Scout. I had been a scout
leader, but not a cub. When he got to be eleven, I wanted him to
visit the Boy Scouts because one of his buddies in the block was
going. He said, "Listen, Dad. I go to public school, right? I
go to Sunday school, right? I'm training for bar mitzvah, right?
Well, the rest of the time is mine."
Anything that can't be done willingly is a tough thing, because
I had the example of my wife's brother who was forced to go to
cheder against his wishes, and when he was confirmed he never set
foot in a synagogue again except for our wedding. So what do you
have to prove? You made the kid go to cheder and he developed a
great antipathy. So that's what I try to look for. What am I
trying to accomplish? Am I doing it the best way?
My son — when he got to be fifteen in the confirmation class was
the year in which Emanu-El was trying to promote the idea that con-
firmands would have a trip to Israel at the end of the year, and he
didn't want to go. He really wasn't mature enough and he resented
the fact —
[end tape 16, side A; begin tape 16, side B]
Kuhn: — the fact that those who weren't going to Israel were treated
differently in the confirmation year than others, and he thought
that was hypocritical, that he would be a hypocrite to be confirmed.
Well, with a month to go, he said, "I want to quit." I was a
principal at Beth El in San Mateo, but I could see both sides of it,
so I said, "All right, you've got to go up and explain it to the
rabbis," which he did. He didn't get confirmed. No, I didn't
consider it the end of the world. It would be worse if he got
confirmed and took out his hatred on somebody else. So now I
think you have to — what are you trying to accomplish, and is this
the best way? Not just a traditional way.
Dorfman: What was life like in your home?
Kuhn: In my parents'?
Dorfman: No, in your own home.
Kuhn: Well, it was built around a cycle. The cycle was: a couple of
nights before the school started in the fall, we went out to some
big stationery store and we got all the kids binders and paper and
all that stuff; and school started; and the kids had new clothes,
new classes, new teachers, new friends. The year went along, and
they had their own friends and their own activities. Once in a
while we'd all go to a movie together, not too often.
347
Kuhn: Then we would aim toward a mid-winter trip to Carmel, because I
had no religious school then, and in the spring we would go over to
Stinson Beach for a week, rent a house.
We had certain different patterns during the summer. One was
the Tahoe pattern. I think in the first few years of the kids' ages,
we went to Tahoe every summer. Then we started the summer home park
routine on the Russian River and they loved that. They loved it and
I hated it. They'd go up for six weeks, and I'd go up every weekend
and maybe the last week. I didn't like the heat. And the river was
so dirty, I called it the Sonoma Ganges. But it was a very health
ful environment. Then we got tired of that about 1965.
But both before and after that, my kids have gone with me hiking
in the summer in the High Sierra country. Then, when that was over,
we just didn't do anything together any more because the kids all
went out with different interests, so there was no way you could
possibly get them all in one place willingly, except maybe Carmel,
Carmel Valley. There were some summers we went to the Carmel Valley
because the heat was always there. There wasn't any fog.
Then we started getting ready for school again. It was a routine
that varied as the kids matured. But they always knew they were
going to have great vacations, and we all looked forward to that.
For my wife, that meant she didn't have to cook all the time.
She had to cook, but she didn't have to cook this exact minute.
That's why we never went to the Lair of the Bear; she didn't want
to live out of an orange crate, which was supposed to be character
istic of the early camps up there. She didn't want to have to be
at any meal when it was convenient for the camp to serve the meal.
She wanted to go to a place where she could eat breakfast late or
whatever. I respected that because she worked hard enough during
the year.
She's an early morning person. She gets up about 5:30, and
between then and 7:15, when she leaves for school, she has made
everyone's breakfast, a couple of people's lunches, started dinner,
done a load of wash — I don't know what else — helped me get dressed.
And I don't know how she does it. I really don't. Early in the
morning — it is remarkable.
Dorfman: Has she always been an early morning person?
Kuhn : Yes .
Dorfman: Were you?
Kuhn: Was I? Well, much more so than I am now. My kids all seem to be
night people. They can sleep right through their mother's working
in the morning.
348
Kuhn: I would work at night down in the basement; the kids call it the
pit. I had an office in the basement there with my typewriter and
my radio and record player; and whatever organization work I was
doing, I'd put in an hour down there every night. I'd frequently
come up and everybody was asleep. Or maybe I'd go to bed early and
get up early then and do the work. But this was a great producing
family.
The first — I would say almost the first twenty years of our life
together, my wife didn't have a job. She just did volunteer work.
She always wanted to be home when the kids came home from school,
and it's only when they had really grown up that she really took
this job as librarian and was counseling director at Cathedral.
Dorfman: Who are your individual children?
Kuhn: The oldest one is sort of my wunderkind.
Dorfman: Why?
Kuhn: Well, because she has the capability to do anything she sets her
mind to. Unfortunately, she really hasn't achieved as much as I
think she could have, not for my pleasure but for her pleasure.
She got excellent grades all through school, was chosen as the
outstanding graduate in her class in high school by the principal,
and won a number of prizes — the Governor's Prize, the Bank of
America, the whole bit.
Then she went to Irvine because it offered an intercurricular
program in music, dance, drama, and art. She was there a year,
and they abolished the major, so she switched back. She switched
to French, which she had been taking at junior high and high school,
and she graduated in French. Meanwhile, in her junior year, she
went abroad to France, did a semester at Aix-en-Provence , and then
went to Israel for four months, traveled around Europe. She was
away for a year and three days.
She returned to Irvine, graduated, and went back to the Sorbonne,
thinking she would get a teacher's credential in French — a semester
there and a semester back at Irvine. But then she decided to stay
in France, so she worked a year for the Joint Distribution Committee.
Then she did transcriptions of scientific translations and has just
come home now after four years in France. Of course, she's been
home once or twice every year for a visit.
But she's very sharp, very fast, a trigger-like mind, plays the
piano, dances well. You name it, she can do it — a good scrabble
player, a great hiker, swimmer. But she never wanted to be in the
position where she was responsible for supervising people who were
349
Kuhn: less efficient than she is. She has a low tolerance for that.
Really, it's almost an intolerance, and so she'll have to learn
the hard way, I think, unless — she'd really like to write children's
books. She wanted to really get into nursery school work, but you
have to get a general secondary credential, and she just wouldn't
discipline herself to learn to teach fifth-grade math and fourth-
grade science in order to teach a three-year-old.
Now, the boy is twenty-three now. He's got a very good mind,
but he hates anything that's abstract like economics or social
science. Yet, the last year in high school he was on the honor
roll. It beats me how. He's finished about a year and a half at
City College, but in very scattered doses. He works for Budget
Rent-a-Car down at the Downtown Center Garage. Before that, he
worked at one of the parking garages downtown. He's a member of
the Teamsters Union. He hasn't lived here for several years. He
rents a house out in Daly City and is pretty independent.
He never really settled the fact that to really get to where
he wants to be, he's going to have to do more studying. He sort
of thinks he'll absorb everything he needs to know by osmosis.
It's sort of a difficult thing for him.
The youngest one, Nancy, who is just twenty-one — she's always
worked, even in high school. She worked at the ice rink cooking
hamburgers so she could get free ice time. She worked for a
jewelry store in high school and after high school; and while she
was going to State (she's finished a year and a half at State), in
the last year, she's worked for Fred's Fruit Bowl. It's a fruit
bar downtown owned by the family of her best girl friend. She's
always worked.
They're all different, and yet they're all the same. All I
know, and I told them — I said, "There's no way I can be fair to
all of you. All I can do is try to be fair. There's no way I
can convince you of being fair. You'll always think that I'm
partial to one of the others. So I'm not going to even ever tell
you I'm fair. All I can say is that I'll try to be fair, to give
you what you need in relationship to your need, not somebody
else's." Sometimes they get the feeling that one or the other
of them is getting the better deal or something, but they're about
to the age where none of them need anything any more.
The two girls live here and they don't pay anything for their
board and room, and eventually they'll move on, and I hope even
tually they'll get married and have their own families. But I
would not try to rate myself as a parent.
Dorfman: What would you say that they have in common?
350
Kuhn: They have an appreciation of their parents' values. I'm quite sure
of that. Now, my son, before he moved out several years ago, pro
tested that his values and ours were miles apart, and I'm not sure
whether that was just protest or how much is actual facts. I sus
pect a lot of it is facts because he's part of a new generation,
as it were, in many ways, and the things he does we wouldn't
approve of. So he figures the thing to do is to do his thing and
let us see it, and I think that's good. It shows a consideration
on their part for not upsetting us. Whether they consider us old
fogeys or not, I don't know. Maybe in years to come they'll figure
out that we were pretty smart, at least for ourselves.
They see so much among friends of theirs, like the kid in school,
a close friend, who died from an overdose of drugs. One of my son's
best friends was killed on a motorcycle, and my son had been a big
motorcycle guy up to that point. He used to repair Hondas in the
basement here, got paid, made a lot of money. The moment that kid
died, my son gave it all up. If we had wanted him to give it up,
he never would have, until it hit his closest friend. So they see
a lot of things that reinforce all that we've tried to tell them.
When they get it from the outside, it's a more effective lesson.
I think one of the toughest things they have to deal with is the
prevalence of divorce among the families of kids they know. I
think they had the feeling, "What is marriage? Marriage can't seem
to be a very permanent affair. Look at So-and-So's parents." Then
sometimes they ask my wife, "Don't you and Daddy ever have big
classic fights?" And I said, "No." I believe, with Dr. George
Bach, who wrote The Intimate Enemy, that the secret is to have a
fight with your wife every day, like a small earthquake, draining
off the big earthquake, but fighting in such a way that you both
win, which takes consummate skill.
My son, incidentally, is very, very unliberal. He
In some ways he's racist, but his closest friends are
black, and many times they can't figure him out. But
that it's not a general sympathy toward those races,
friends just happen to be guys he likes very much who
to be black and Chinese. But he's a black and white
oldest brother was. You're either good or you're bad
between, no grades. That's wrong, I think.
Dorfman: Do you think he'll change?
's anti-gay.
Chinese and
he contends
His closest
also happen
guy, like my
, nothing in
Kuhn:
I hope so. I hope he matures.
351
Personal Concerns
Dorfman:
Kuhn:
Dorfman:
Kuhn:
Dorfman:
Kuhn:
Dorfman:
Kuhn:
What are your concerns for yourself?
My concerns for myself? My health and my wife's health. Those
are primary. They're really the only concerns I have. I used to
have the feeling, "What am I going to do when I retire?" And,
having such a backlog of activities, I felt I never would be bored.
But all I hope now is just that I last it out to retirement.
What do you give a lot of thought to?
Well, less and less about things I have no control over. If there's
a big flood in La Porte, Indiana, I can't worry about that too much.
There's nothing I can do about it. I can try to have some influence
still with my kids — not much. Mostly I've tried to make life a
little more liberal for my wife. I've often said that the proper
concern of mankind is the perfection of the soul, but then you have
to figure out what do you really mean by that. I'm not quite sure.
We all have experienced loneliness within a lifetime,
you dealt with it?
How have
Well, in 1969, I had a severe bicycle accident. I think that due
primarily to the drugs I took to control my blood pressure, due to
the fact that I was very much overweight at that time, I sustained
a very severe depression, and I saw a psychiatrist several times,
and he said, "You're undergoing quite a normal thing. You're under
going a crisis confronting your own mortality." I wanted to deal
with that. As far as loneliness is concerned, I don't think I'm
lonely. I agree that no one can really see into the mind of anyone
else. Do you want to stop the machine for a minute? [Tape inter
ruption]
You have a very meaningful note that you received that you were
going to talk about.
Yes, this is a card I received from a woman whose own life has
been marred by severe illness on the part of her husband and his
subsequent death from cancer. I don't know her all that well.
She writes me, "Erev shabbat, November 13, 1977. Dear Marshall,
Although I really don't know you very well, or you me, I just
wanted to say a couple of things on paper that are hard to say
when we visit so briefly in the office or at meetings. I want to
share my feelings as follows.
No one can understand what another human being thinks, feels,
and therefore lives through in the process of life. However, I
know you are a brave man for so many, many reasons. Even when the
352
Kuhn: price for strength, faith, and gutsiness has huge measure, it is
an individual's ability to deal with his finiteness, when having
to deal with constant physical reminders, that makes me appreciate
so much, Marshall, what you are managing so beautifully. Kol ha
kabod. Warm regards."
That's the most beautiful letter I ever got, because I know
where it comes from.
Dorfman: It certainly is lovely.
Kuhn: Now, I'm saying a lot of things on this tape that I normally
wouldn't say, and I'm not even sure at this point that when I
edit them I'll even let them remain. The prime thing is that I
have a disease called amotrophic lateral sclerosis, which is Lou
Gehrig's disease. My wife has myasthenia gravis. The odds of a
husband and wife having these two rare muscular disorders are on
the order of maybe twenty-five million to one. Now she can take
care of herself with drugs and take care of me.
I can't take care of myself anymore, in the sense that there
are certain things that I just can't do. I can't shave myself.
I can't bathe myself. But I'm unimpaired mentally. There's no
mental impairment with this disease whatsoever. But it's a tough
thing, because when you ask what has brought us together, it's
the mutual knowledge that we both have these really in some ways
terrifying disorders and for no really apparent reason. No one
knows their cause. No one knows if there ever will be a cure.
Although my wife does, with the miracle of a drug called
mestanon, have her condition pretty much under control. She'll
wake up in the morning very listless, and when she takes one pill
of this drug, in five minutes it's like 880 volts in her body.
She can function fantastically. She knows more about her own
dosage during the day than any physician. She's been asked by
her neurologist to meet with national authorities to explain how
the lay person can really cope with this.
So this may explain when I say that the only thing I really am
concerned about is health, because nothing else makes a difference.
I like to meet friends. I work out of my home now, using the
phone, my secretary will come out once or twice a week, and I
function quite well. But for a long time people didn't realize
that. Now I get visitors every day — morning, noon, and night,
whatever it may be. Last Friday was my birthday. There were
twenty people who came in six different groups. This is wonderful,
and I'm sure it's tough for them to see me sitting here with this
pneumobelt on, but they do it, except for those who can't take it.
353
Kuhn: Whether they can't take it for me or they can't take it for
themselves, I don't know. Maybe they don't know. But I think
I've had — I'm sixty-one. I had sixty good years, which is really
a good thing, and if this is what the Lord intended for me, that's
good enough for me.
Dorfman: You're still giving of yourself.
Kuhn: Well, my parents and my two brothers died of circulatory disorders,
heart or stroke, so I figured that was going to happen to me, but
something else came along. Ours is not to reason why. The Lord
giveth, the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord. So
that's my sermon for this Tuesday night, as Walter Cronkite.
[Chuckles]
Dorfman: In view of the serious things you've told me now, I have another
question which I'll ask now. It might be wiser to save it for
next time, but I'll ask it now anyhow.
Kuhn: All right.
Dorfman: In view of everything, what has been your greatest joy?
Kuhn: Oh, my wife. My wife. Well, you might say my family, because
they're inseparable, my wife and the kids. I don't know. I say
that, but there are really no ways of measuring. The kids would
have fulfilled their potential in the sense that — not 100 percent,
because no one gets that. But in the sense that I would feel that
whatever happiness they got, I somehow contributed to — I'd feel
better about it. Maybe they're still too young and immature.
It's a tough world we brought them into. I just don't know.
There are certain things now I just feel so incompetent to deal
with. I lack mobility.
Dorfman: Because of this illness?
Kuhn: Yes. I'm pretty much confined here. I may go out once or twice
a month to some function or meeting or doctor's appointment or
something like that. So, therefore, I'm not really controlling
myself as I used to, although I'm still involved heavily, particu
larly in the Sierra Club. As long as I can get near a dictating
situation, dictate to my daughter — but I've really cut down my
outside activities. The Diabetic Youth Foundation doesn't require
anything of me, and my work as treasurer of the Arboretum Society
is very undemanding, and it will be my last year there.
But the Sierra Club — I hope to finish out my year in May, which
will be eight years since we started it, and I told the committee
at our meeting recently that while I've talked about stepping down
as chairman before, I would really have to do it this time.
354
Kuhn: First of all, it's too long for any one person to dominate it,
and it's an admission of failure on my part that I haven't developed
anyone to succeed me, even though I have someone in mind whom I know
could do it, if I could convince them that they are capable of doing
it. They look at some of the achievements we made, and they feel,
"Well, gee, we couldn't do that," but everyone has their own style.
Dorfman: Do you think you'll be permitted to step down?
Kuhn: Oh, yes, with a stroke of the pen. Sure. It's just so tough to do
some of these things in the sense that while I'm on this pneumobelt
here, this respirator, that's fine. But to go off and go around the
house and go to my office inside there, you have to move the whole
apparatus — have someone move it for me, actually — and this is quite
enervating.
So, therefore, I sit here at this table and people bring me
things, but I'm really trying to catch up with paperwork and throw
stuff out by the bushel. I'm at the point now — I tell my wife,
"Find the file on so-and-so and throw it out, but don't show it
to me because if you show it to me, I'll start to read it."
Dorfman: Do you think that's the historian in you that you've talked about?
Kuhn: Well, it's amazing, the stuff I've collected over the years. I
was really involved in opposing the SST on the grounds that it
would exacerbate the effect of jet lag. I had a file that thick
[gestures] on this thing. I saved every clipping in the world to
send to Dr. Schickel at MIT. But then it's clear that America
won't have an SST, but we're allowing the French version to fly
here. So I said, "Throw the whole thing out. It's moot."
I had a project on the drawing board called the Conference of
Citizen Support Groups, groups like the Arboretum Society, the
Friends of Rec Park, and the Friends of the Library — bring them
all together to see what things we had going for us, just how
big a contribution were these voluntary citizens making to the
community? I had it all lined up, program and everything, but I
just can't pull it off, so I threw the whole thing out because I
couldn't get anyone else really interested to the extent — well,
they'd all benefit from it.
What I used to say is, "Who will bake the bread? They'll eat
it. Who's going to bake it?" It's too bad, because I think we
could demonstrate something very vital.
Now, I could still achieve some of it by phoning all these
twenty organizations and just asking them for their budget, taking
out how much in cash they provided to the library to hire person
nel and buy books, how much we put in the Arboretum educational
355
Kuhn: programs and in plants, how many animals the Zoological Society
bought for the zoo, and so on; then adding in the factor for
volunteer hours, which would be staggering. This would represent
either the saving of a tremendous amount of money in this city,
or if the city hadn't put the money in, it would be a reduction
in the services provided the citizens, and no one's really looked
at the whole thing altogether.
I took this up with the political science department at Berkeley,
and they said, "We've never even considered that as far as a problem
in municipal government is concerned." I said, "Well, it's stagger
ing in its size."
You take a fine arts museum — someone buys a $1 1/2 million
picture. If they hadn't done it, the city wouldn't do it. But
this was just a drawing board thing.
It's one of the things I used to entertain myself with as I
drove around, planning all these types of things built around
vacations, or writing something in my mind, humorous, such as an
auxiliary, not for the zoo or a library, but for the city dump,
with its own decent program, UN affiliation, etc. Gift shop.
Dorfman: Is there anything further that you think that we should know, that
you would like to have us know?
Kuhn: Oh, you know more about me than I do. Probably too much. No, I
don't know, because — I know this has been in some ways a limited
interview, in certain areas in which you and Magnes were interested.
I wasn't quite sure how the focus was determined, so I just more or
less responded, rather than giving you my whole life story. But I
think you've got a good enough cross-section to really — I consider
that you have done a conscientious job.
Dorfman: Your contributions have been remarkable, and we're certainly in
debted to you. We'll come back to additions later on.
Kuhn: All right, fine.
[end tape 16, side B]
355a
^ ' JVEarshall Kuhn
Marshall Kuhn's life was a blue print for humanitarianism .
His \activities at the Jewish Welfare Federation, Temple
Emanu-El, the Jewish Center, the Cub Scouts, Irwin Memorial
Blood Bank and the Sierra Club were reflections of his ceaseless
energy and his spirit. No doubt we have left many of Marshall
Kuhn's activities off the list but they are all worthy causes that
Marshall himself never forgot.
Although the award recently given him, "Environmentalist of
<he Year," appropriately described his contributions in that im
portant area of all peoples' lives, it was the individual help,
counsel, and warmth that Marshall Kuhn donated to the Jewish
Community which wijl be long remembered here. Marshall's
legacy of good will could rarely be equalled. His philanthropy
went far beyond dollars.
During the last weeks of a painful illness, Marshall introduced
Herman Graebe to the Jewish community, a man who had
rescued thousands of Jews from the Nazis during World War II.
"He's an exceptional man," Marshall would say to people of
Graebe, "one of the greatest humanitarians I've ever known."
Without reservation, those words can be applied to Marshall
Kuhn.
Community Mourns Marshall Kuhn
(Continued From Page One)
Center and, in recent years, as
director of the Jewish Endowment
Fund of the Jewish Welfare
Federation. In addition, he had
volunteered for a variety of
philanthropic organizations over a
period of 40 years . .^
In both his professional and
volunteer activities, Mr. Kuhn
dedicated himself above all as a
teacher. He was a religious school
instructor and principal at Temple
Emanu-El and Peninsula Temple
Beth El, an accomplished speakei
and raconteur in his professional
capacity, an historian on the San
Francisco Bay Area, and the
founding Cub Master of Pack 17.
Mr. Kuhn's energy and en
thusiasm were contagious as an
advisor. Thus, he acted as the
catalyst that sparked many
projects from idea to completion.
Gifted with an astute mind and
remarkable memory, Mr. Kuhn
was the authority called upon to
assess information for visionary
social planning. He became a
mentor to many whom he taught
and to those with whom he work
ed.
Although illness had recently
forced him to restrict activity to his
home, Mr. Kuhn continued to
share his expertise, never cur
tailing the volume of his work or
the scope of his interests. These
included efforts to alleviate the
-distress of Jews overseas, to
•*. '
Marshall Kuhn
provide aid to Israel, and to help
American Jewry survive and
flourish spiritually.
Mr.. Kuhn was an ardent
conservationist and athlete. He
was marshal! of the Kuhn Track
Club and organizer of a project to
protect the archives of the Sierra
Club. He helped bring into being
the John Muir Nature Trail in
Golden Gate Park, as well as the
Bearskin Meadow Camp for
diabetic children. He initiated the
reprint of John Muir's "Stickeen,"
to which he wrote the preface.
Recent tributes to Mr. Kuhn
San Francisco Jewish Bulletin.
Friday, May 26, 1978, page 3
\
Kuhn Mourned
Marshall H. Kuhn, a prominent
and often honored local Jewish
and community leader, died
Thursday, May 18 at Mt. Zion
Hospital. Born in San Francisco in
1916, he lived most of his life in
the Richmond District. Mr. Kuhn
was a graduate of Lowell High
School in 1933 and the University
of California, Berkeley in 1941.
In his business and professional
life, he served as a sales executive
for Blue Shield of California,
manager of Donor Recruitment
for the Irwin Memorial Blood
Bank, executive director of the
San Francisco Jewish Community
(S*« KUHN Page 20)
include recognition as "En
vironmentalist of the Year" by the
John Muir National Historic
Society and a special achievement
award as founding Chairman of
the Sierra Club History Com
mittee. Earlier this year, Temple
Emanu-El of San Francisco
acknowledged his service with a
special achievement award.
At the time of his death, Mr.
Kuhn was editing his own
memoirs, under the sponsorship of
the Judah Magnes Museum and
the American Jewish Congress.
These will be included in the San
Francisco Jewish Community
Leaders Series by the Bancroft
Library at the University of
California. Berkeley.
He is survived by his wife,
Caroline, and his three children,
Alyson, Bruce and Nancy.
Memorial services were held at
Temple Emanu-El under the
direction of Sinai Memorial
Chapel. Contributions may be
made to the Muscular Dystrophy
Association, 278 Post St., S.F.
94108, or to the U.S. Committee
Sports for Israel, Inc. - Tennis,
3561 Addison St., San Diego,
92106.
Receives Award
NEW YORK-The Hon.
Simcha Dinitz, Israel's Am
bassador to ihc United States,
received the Scopus Award from
the American Friends of the
Hebrew University.
355b
San Francisco Examiner,
Saturday, May 20, 1978
F
Marshall H. Kuhn, an excecu-
fave and prominent member of the
JBan Francisco Jewish community,
idled Thursday it Mu Zion Hospital
jaf ter a long i lleness. He was 62.
| Bora in San Francisco, he was
*a graduate of Lowell High School
!*Dd the University- of California at
^Berkeley, a historian, environmen
talist, athlete, scholar and teacher
m well as an official tJf many
•Business and cultural organizations.
In recent years Mr. Kuhn was
•director of the Jewish Community
.Endowment Fund of the Jewish
\ Welfare Federation.
x •
Earlier he served as executive
flirector of the San Francisco Jew
ish Community Center, as an offi
cial of the Irwin Memorial Blood
Bank and as sales exective of Blue
. Shield of California.
/
One of his awards was Environ-
4nentalist of the Year, presented by
'the John Muir Historic Society. He
Was also the founding chairman of
•.the Sierra Club's history commit
tee.
4
» Mr. Kuhn is survived by his
r*ife Caroline and three children
f.Alyson, Bruce and Nancy.
B
*. . A memorial service will be
held next Wednesday at 4 p.m. at
Temple Emanu-El. In lieu of flow
ers contributions may be made to
the Muscular Dystrophy Associa
tion.
San Francisco Chronicle,
Saturday, May 20, 1978
MARSHALL H. KUHN
iJcwfsh ta»d«r, activist
Marshal! H. Kuhn
* *
Marshall H. Kuhn, a longtime'
Jewish leader, spirited citizen and
.•conservation activist, is dead at 61.
A rabbi who was closely con
nected with him said: "He was a
man whose good works literally
touched thousands of lives."
A native San Franciscan, Mr.
• Kaon died Thursday at Mount Zion
Hospital after a long illness.
From 1973 be was director of
the "local Jewish Welfare Federa-
. lion's endowment fund. For many
.'years before that, he was director
of Northern. California sales for
rBlue Shield.
But much of his 'time and
•energy . were devoted to service
Tanging from the Cub Scouts to the
Camp Fire Girls to the Irwin Memo-
'rial Blood Bank to Temple Emanu-
El, which recently honored him for
.outstanding contributions.
v A 1941 graduate of the Univer- ,
%ity of California at Berkeley, Mr.
Kuhn was also an ardent conserva-
•tionist. He helped bring about the
John Muir Nature Trail in Golden
•Gate Park and was a recipient of
the "Environmentalist of the Year"
award by the John Muir National
.Historic Society. He was a longtime
"member of the Sierra Club.
»;" He was a former executive
'director of the San Francisco Com
munity Center and once was a co
tchairman of the Jewish Welfare
federation's annual fund-raising
* . Surviving are his wife, Caro-
*tine; two daughters, Alyson and
,' Nancy, and a son, Bruce, all of San
^Francisco. •>,: . t.;. :<> .(
''
'" 'Services were .yesterday;
35*c
Volume XXLV no. 6
June 1. 1978
PENINSULA TEMPLE BETH EL
BULLETIN
MARSHALL H.KUHN
OF BLESSED MEMORY
He came to Peninsula Temple Beth El on temporary
"loan" for a year from Congregation Eznanu-El of San Francisco
and stayed to bless us for eighteen years as the Principal of our
Religious School. He passed away on May 18. 1978. He came to
this life in 1916 and blessed an entire community throughout
those yean.
Every significant human betterment endeavor in the
Jewish and general communities to which he turned his attention
received a full measure of his boundless energy, profound
devotion and abundant generosity.
He loved his family. He loved us, his fellow Jews and
fellow human beings. He was our loyal friend, our hard-working
co-worker.
He took life and its problems seriously, laughed when we
laughed, wept when we wept, and helped make even the most
trying times courageous opportunities. To this a generation of
Religious School students will attest, as will all those who served
on community boards and committees with him.
For me, personally, he brought the blessing of inspiration
that magnified the beauty of many happy days with our young
people and their dear ones.
S.E.R.
356
INDEX ~ Marshall H. Kuhn
Abouaf, Morris, 289, 318-319
Adams, Ansel, 202, 235, 239, 265, 333
American Council for Judaism, 112-113, 134, 143-144, 309
American Jewish Archives, 122
American Jewish Committee, 63, 67, 322
American Jewish Congress, 67
Angoff, Charles, 46, 95, 149-150, 193-194
Anshey Sfard, Congregation of, 38
anti-Semitism, 10, 17, 43, 63, 71, 75-77, 228-229, 256-257, 313, 331, 335
Ark of the Covenant, 133
Asher, Rabbi Joseph. See Temple Emanu-El: rabbis
assimilation, 77-78
Axelrod, Judge Albert, 208
Azuma, Ryozo, 248, 268-269, 316-317
Bade, Mrs. William F., 237, 245
Bancroft Library, The, 234-238, 244-249
Baum, Willa, 236, 239, 242, 246
Bausch, Doctor, 224
Becker, Robert, 238
Begin, Menachim, 220
Ben Gurion, 220, 237
Berg, Daniel, 186
Berry, Philip 241-243, 284
Beth Israel, Congregation of, 82
Bettman, Henry, 299
Bloch, Ernest, 23
Bloch, Louis, 39
Blood Banks:
American Association of Blood Banks, 91-94, 136, 293-295
Irwin Memorial Blood Bank, 3, 65, 89-94, 313
Blue Shield of California. See Marshall Kuhn: employment, Blue Shield
of California
Blumenthal, Ben, 201
Blumenthal, Louis, 100
Blumlein, John, 299
Blumlein, Joseph, 287, 299
B'nai B'rith, 58, 64-68; Anti-Defamation League, 67
Borovoy, Marilyn, 287
Borovoy, Robert, 299, 320
Boy Scouts, San Francisco Bay Council of, 133, 282
Bradley, Harold, 245
Brandeis University, 145
Breit, Ben, 289
Briera, 134-135, 138
357
Br inner, William Zev, 186
Brooks, Robin, 243
Brower, David, 230-232, 239
Bryan, John E., 303
Brydon, Jock, 283
Bureau of Jewish Education, 20, 141
California Alliance of Jewish Women, 57
California Historical Society, 286-290
Campfire Girls, San Francisco Council of, 205-206, 216, 280-282, 289-290,
319-322
Camp Swig, (Saratoga), 139, 208-209
Camp Tawonga, 4, 12, 18-20, 24, 203-207
Central Hebrew School, 20
Cerf, Arthur, 156-157
Charles, Caroline, 290
Clark, Lewis, 233, 242
Clifton, Mrs. Horace, 291
Clyde, Norman, 20
Coblentz, William, 296
Colby, Will, 230, 264
Collins, George, 249
Community Chest. See Marshall H. Kuhn: volunteer activities
Coney, Jane, 289, 318
Corvin, Adele, 287, 320
Davis, Elizabeth, 252-253
Davis, Virginia, 25
Dedrick, Claire, 333
Deutsch, Monroe, 42, 52, 151
Diabetic Youth Foundation, 9, 216, 282-283, 289, 319
Dobbs, Harold, 292, 322-323
East Bay Foundation for Diabetic Children, 289
Eckman, Rabbi Julius. See Temple Emanu-El : rabbis
Eshkol, Levi, 220
Farquhar, Francis, 233, 237, 242-243, 264
Farquhar, Marjory, 242
Federation of Jewish Charities, 100, 287
Feinstein, Dianne, 314
Flamm, Jerry, 51, 54
Fleishhacker, Herbert, 84-86
Fleishhacker, Herbert, Jr., 85
Fleishhacker, Mortimer, Jr., 85, 287
358
Fox, Kenneth, 177-178
Friends of the Earth, 329
Freund, Fred, 299
Futrell, William, 332
Gaba, Morton, 161, 222
Geballe, Walter, 299
Gendlin, Frances, 335
Gillman, William, 215
Girl Scouts, San Francisco Bay Council of, 123, 288
Glaser, Rabbi Joseph, 186
Gold, Irwin, 205
Goldsmith, Pauline, 225
Goldstein, Louis, 320
Goldstein, Mrs. Louis, 299
Goodday, George, 186
Gordus, Rabbi Robert, 77
Gorfinkel, John, 186
Graebe, Herman, 146
Grooman, Maurie, 215, 222
Grossman, Moses, 299
Gump, Richard, 299
Haas, Louis, 39
Haas, Walter, 244, 281-283
Hadassah, 59
Hamilton, Brutus, 164
Hanford, Jr., Lloyd, 299
Harris, Mrs. Henry, 39, 57
Harris, Mrs. Perry, 299
Hart, Henry, 190, 286
Hartage, Maurice, 299
Hausman, Rabbi Irving. See Temple Emanu-El : rabbis
Hebrew Free Loan Association, 20, 62, 201, 221, 224
Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion, 80, 129
Heller, Walter, 288
Hemphill, Bernice, 89
Heppner, Mrs. Morris, 58
Hepzibah School, 132
Heumann, Mrs. Jules (Sally), 299
Hildebrand, Joel, 158, 235
Hillel Foundation, 65, 201, 224
Hirsch, Marcel, 224
Homewood Terrace, 16, 201, 221, 224
Jacobi, Frederick, 123
Jacobs, Mrs. Samuel, 288, 320
359
Jewish Community Center, San Francisco, 3-4, 65, 97, 100-101, 222
Jewish Community Endowment Fund, 3, 98
Jewish Community Relations Council, 147
Jewish Congregations, San Francisco, 38, 70, 82-83
Jewish Education, 20, 38, 105, 141
Jewish Family Service. See Marshall H. Kuhn: volunteer activities
Jewish Home for the Aged, 221, 224
Jewish Labor Committee, 67
Jewish National Welfare Fund, 4, 59, 100
Jewish Neighborhoods, San Francisco:
Fillmore-McAllister district, 6, 13-15, 19-20, 38, 196
Richmond district, 6-7, 11, 14-15, 37-38, 44-48
Jewish Refugees:
Far Eastern Society of Jews, 74-75
Jewish Council of 1933, 70, 74-75
Jewish Vocational and Career Counseling, 200, 222-223
Jewish Vocational Guidance Bureau, 161, 215-216
Jewish Welfare Federation. See Marshall H. Kuhn: volunteer activities
Jews:
European, 143-148
German, 74
Orthodox, 81
Sephardic, 70, 73
unaffiliated, 70, 82, 128-129
Johnson, Rodney, 248
Joint Distribution Committee. See Marshall H. Kuhn: volunteer activities
Jones, DeWitt, 247, 269
Jones, Holvig, 243
Jordan, Charles, 220
Kahn, Edgar, 226-228
Kahn, Florence Prag, 43, 49
Kahn, Myer, 137, 186
Kaplan, Bill and Peggy, 289
Karonsky, George, 186
Keneseth Israel, Congregation of, 38
Kilburg, Mrs. James, 303
Kimball, Stewart, 235
Kimes, William, 247, 268
Klein, Mrs. Paul, 299
Kohs, Samuel, 6, 35, 212-213
Koshland, Daniel, 222
Kroeber, Mrs. Theodora, 251
Kuhn, Marshall H. :
athletics, 39-40, 50-54, 160-164, 274-275, 311-312
author, 249, 259-263, 301
catalyst, 46, 214-217, 262-263, 269, 295-297, 305, 309
360
Kuhn, Marshall H. :
childhood and youth, 7-20, 25-37, 42-45, 203-207, 297-299, 345
education:
Sutro Grammar School, 7, 8, 16
Lowell High School, 8-9, 31, 48-54, 72, 95
University of California, Berkeley, 8, 25-27, 41 54-57
85, 117-118, 149-166, 170, 260-261
employment:
Blue Shield of California, 3, 86-90, 293-294, 313
Crocker Anglo National Bank, 2-3, 84-86
Irwin Memorial Blood Bank, 89-94
Jewish Community Center, San Francisco, 4, 65
Jewish Welfare Federation, 9, 97, 106
Peninsula Temple Beth El, San Mateo, 3, 169, 172-173, 324-327
Temple Emanu-El, San Francisco, 3, 124-125, 164-195
family:
brothers:
Harold (HAK) , 2, 22, 48-49, 65, 205
Mortimer, 2, 21-22, 28-29, 204
children:
Alyson, 20, 227, 348
Bruce, 2, 202, 227, 324, 349
Nancy, 2, 187, 227, 349
grandparents, Minnie and Nathan Kurlandzik, 2
parents, 22-23, 35, 41-45
father, Samuel Kuhn, 2, 6-7, 16, 18, 23-24, 36, 45
mother, Agnes Kurlandzik Kuhn, 2, 6-7, 9, 18, 28, 57-58
wife, Caroline Sarah Nahman Kuhn, 218, 291, 338-342, 347, 353
religious background and education, 8, 31-34, 39-40, 274
self-evaluation, 134, 149-153, 161, 165-167, 188-189
values, 59, 144-148, 159, 174-179, 189-196, 199, 209-210, 213-215,
276, 304, 313-315, 319-320, 324-325, 343-346, 349-350
volunteer activities:
American Jewish Committee, 63
Blood Banks:
American Association of Blood Banks, 293-295, 301
Irwin Memorial Blood Bank, 65, 89
B'nai B'rith, 64-65, 203, 308
Hillel Foundation, 65, 308-309
Joint Distribution Committee, 104, 224, 339
California Historical Society, 286, 289-290
Diabetic Youth Foundation, 216, 282-283, 289, 353
Jewish Welfare Federation, 4, 9-10, 49, 62, 87, 102-104, 198-202, 217-222
Emanu-El Residence Club, 200-201
Homewood Terrace, 16, 201, 221, 224, 310-311
Jewish Family Service, 62, 70, 75, 201, 221-223, 310-311
Jewish Home for the Aged, 304-305
Jewish Vocational and Career Counseling Service, 200, 215-225
United Jewish Appeal, 63, 221, 300-301, 306-308
361
Kuhn, Marshall H. :
volunteer activities:
Judah Magnes Memorial Museum, 306
San Francisco General Hospital Auxiliary, 216, 290-292
San Francisco Bay Council of Girl Scouts, 288
San Francisco Council of Boy Scouts, 133, 282
San Francisco Council of Campfire Girls, 205-206, 216, 280-282, 287-290,
319-322
Sierra Club, 8, 202, 226-230, 248-249, 336-337, 353
History Committee, 217, 230-259, 265-272, 281-282, 329-330, 336-337
John Muir National Historic Site, Martinez, 246, 249, 266
Strybing Arboretum Society, 9, 216-217, 241, 283-286, 289, 303, 318, 353
Emanu-El Residence Club, 200-201
United Bay Area Crusade, 277-279, 287, 301, 309
Young Audiences Week, 216-217, 279-287
Kushins, Charles, 274
Lachalt, Barbara, 247
Lachalt, Tredman, 266
Lage, Ann, 239, 250
Ladar, Sam, 224
Landsberg, Guy, 324
Lasky, Mrs. Moses, 299
Leonard, Richard, 202, 231, 234, 239, 249, 264-265, 333
Le Conte, Joseph and Joseph Jr., 235, 266
Levine, Rabbi Raphael H. , 208
Levinson, Robert E., 177
Levy, Harold, 186
Lipner, Rabbi Pinchas, 141
Lisberger, Sylvan, 298
Lurie, Rabbi Brain, 97, 200
McAllister Street. See Jewish Neighborhoods, San Francisco
McClosky, Michael, 242
McLaren, John, 286
Madfes, Sol, 324
Magid, Rabbi Arnold J. , 314
Magnes Memorial Museum, Judah, 109, 174, 242
Marks, Raymond, 137
Marquette, Ira, 318
Marshall, George, Louis, Robert, 322
Mauk, Charlotte, 233, 242
Meir, Golda, 220, 327
Menhuin, Yehuda, 120, 122
Menninger, Robert, 209
Merritt, Rabbi Max, 153
Meyer, Rabbi Hartin, 115, 190
362
Myer, Arthur, 299
Mllhaud, Darius, 123
Mitchell, Ernest, 148
Momyer, Joe, 235
Moss, Larry I., 332
Mount Zion Hospital, 108, 200, 221, 225
Muir, John, 45-46, 95, 234, 244, 259-262, 268, 286
National Historic Site, Martinez, 246, 249, 266
Nash, Robert, 243
National Council of Jewish Women, 39, 57-59
National Parks Service, 249
Nepert Family Fund, 284
Newman, Rabbi Louis. See Temple Emanu-El : rabbis
Neylan, John Francis, 117
Nicklesburg, Janet, 299, 497
Noonan, Stanley, 120
Norris, Kathleen, 208
Dies, Rabbi Arthur, 108
Olney, Mary, 216, 318
Otsea, Mation, 299
Parsons, Harriet, 242
Peninsula Temple Beth El, 79, 117, 301, 324-327
Pollock, Robert, 299, 320
Pope, Saxton, Jr., 251-255
Portnoy, Cantor Joseph L. See Temple Emanu-El : cantors
rabbis. See Temple Emanu-El
Raffin, Bennett, 219
Raff in, Mrs. Bennett, 299
Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, 232-233, 237, 241-243, 248
Reichert, Rabbi Irving. See Temple Emanu-El rabbis
Reichert, Mrs. Irving, 292, 322
Rieger, Thomas, 232, 241
Richmond district. See Jewish neighborhoods, San Francisco
Rinder, Cantor Reuben. See Temple Emanu-El : cantors
Rinder, Mrs. Reuben, 39, 59
Robins, Rabbi David, 186
Rogers, Mrs. Ernest (Barbara), 299
Russell, Madeline Haas, 327
Samuelson, Ruth, 186
363
San Francisco Foundation, 284
San Francisco General Hospital Auxiliary. See Marshall H. Khun volunteer
activities
San Francisco Recreation and Park Department, 241
Schaldach, Henry, 172
Schallenberger, Moses, 270
Schrepfer, Susan, 236, 239, 242, 246
Seroney, Mrs. A.B., 318
Sharet, Moishe, 220
Silberman, Mervyn, 8, 297-298
Sider, Al, 208
Sierra Club. See Marshall H. Kuhn : volunteer activities
Sloss, Frank, 60, 222, 287
Sloss, Leon, 85
Sloss, Mrs. Max, 39, 58
Snow, Ruth, 289
Sproul, Robert Gordon, 85
Stein, Mrs. Lawrence, 289
Steinhart, John, 219
Stern, Isaac, 120, 187
Stone, Mrs. Daniel, 288
Stone, Irving, 25, 55-56
Strybing Arboretum Society, 216-217, 241, 283-286, 289, 303, 318, 353
Swig, Ben, 103, 208-209, 219
Swillinger, Carol, 318
Teller, Edward, 141
Temple Beth El. See Peninsula Temple Beth El
Temple Beth Israel, 82
Temple Sherith Israel, 38, 81-82, 208
Temple Emanu-El, 4, 8, 19, 31-34, 38, 41, 59-61, 69, 73-76, 81-82, 85-86,
105-129, 133-139
cantors:
Joseph L. Portnoy, 123
Reuben Rinder, 31-32, 38, 119-124
Institute for Adult Studies, 137
Leadership, 58, 136-138
organizations:
Cub Pack, 216, 311, 322-323
Jewish Youth Athletic League, 170-172
Men's Club, 117-119, 199
Pathfinders, 3, 38, 100, 115-116, 154-156
Young Men's Group, 86
Sisterhood Guild, 39, 58-59, 199
Women's, 57-59
rabbis , 107-126
Joseph Asher, 125-127, 130-131
Julius Eckman, 132
364
Temple Emanu-El,
rabbis:
Alvin Fine, 62, 125, 172-173, 323
Irving Hausman, 111
Meyer Heller, 173
Louis Newman, 17-20, 31, 34, 37-38, 109-110, 172, 197, 220
Irving Reichert, 4, 10, 39, 60-61, 74, 86, 100, 110-117, 152,
180-181, 218
Sunday School, 3, 71-72, 124-127, 197
Israel Summer Trips, 69, 125-126, 139, 187, 192, 209
Tzedakah program, 179
Temple Judea, 82
United Bay Area Crusade, 277-279, 287, 301, 309
Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 129, 140, 209
United Jewish Appeal, 63, 67, 104, 135, 148, 221
University of California, Berkeley, 8, 25-27, 41, 54-57, 85, 117-118,
149-166, 170, 260-261
Varnhagen, Mrs. Stephen, 299
Warburg, Eddie, 220
Warenskjold, Dorothy, 120
Watkins, Thomas, 247, 269
Weiner, Stanley, 212
Weiss, Mrs. Edward, 299
Weizmann, Chaim, 10, 142-143
West, Betty, 262
Wiltsek, Barbara Berelson, 314-315
White, Rabbi Saul, 220
Whitman, Alden, 257
Young Audiences Week, 216-217, 279-287
Zellerbach Family Fund, 285
Zellerbach, Harold, 86, 114, 136-138
Zellerbach, Jenny, 289, 318
Zimmerman, Arthur, 224
Zionism, 60-61, 112-113, 155. See also American Council for Judaism;
Temple Emanu-El
Elaine Dorfman
Graduate of California State University at Hayward , B.A. in
Sociology; Lone Mountain College M.A. in Sociology /with
Communications.
Wrote advertising copy for theater agency in San Francisco
and wrote a monthly investigative column for a Richmond,
California newspaper.
Taught Sociology at Diablo Valley College, Pleasant Hill;
culture and history of Chinese cooking in the Martinez
Recreation Department; business communication, business law,
and business English at Heald College, Walnut Creek.
Volunteer interviewer for Judah L. Magnes Memorial Museum and
American Jewish Congress project, "San Francisco Jews of
Eastern European Origin, 1880-1940." Employed as an interviewer/
editor by the Regional Oral History Office in the Jewish
Community Leaders series and areas of business and education.
a 6
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